KEPIER WOOD EAST: Tilia cordata 'Small Leaved Lime'
Some 5000 – 7000 years ago the British Isles was experiencing a warmer climate that we do today. During this period the small-leaved lime was at its northern limit of its range in Cumbria and the north east of England. As temperatures slowly cooled over thousands of years this tree and its cousin the large-leaved lime, ceased to produce viable seed, as humans slowly tamed the wild wood, the oak and ash outstripped limes as the most useful timber trees, so little effort was made to save it or replant it.
The sparse and localized populations of the native’s limes that remain today will occasionally reproduce from layering boughs and windthrown trees bedding into the woodland floor, old trees rot and fall and simply regrow form their roots. There are some massive lime coppice stools in Britain that measure over 50 feet across, the single stools, the root or stump of a felled trees, having spread and fragmented to form circles that look as though they are individual trees. Some of these may go back several thousands of years.
KEPIER WOOD EAST: Tilia cordata 'Small Leaved Lime'
Some 5000 – 7000 years ago the British Isles was experiencing a warmer climate that we do today. During this period the small-leaved lime was at its northern limit of its range in Cumbria and the north east of England. As temperatures slowly cooled over thousands of years this tree and its cousin the large-leaved lime, ceased to produce viable seed, as humans slowly tamed the wild wood, the oak and ash outstripped limes as the most useful timber trees, so little effort was made to save it or replant it.
The sparse and localized populations of the native’s limes that remain today will occasionally reproduce from layering boughs and windthrown trees bedding into the woodland floor, old trees rot and fall and simply regrow form their roots. There are some massive lime coppice stools in Britain that measure over 50 feet across, the single stools, the root or stump of a felled trees, having spread and fragmented to form circles that look as though they are individual trees. Some of these may go back several thousands of years.