The linden or lime, Tilia, is a broad, long-lived, sweet-scented tree much planted in the towns and villages of central and northern Europe. Among the Germanic and Slavic peoples it was the tree of the community: the village linden stood at the centre of the settlement, and beneath it the people gathered to dance, to celebrate and above all to hold court and pronounce judgement, so that justice was said to be given under the lime. It was held to be a tree of truth, under which no falsehood could stand, and of peace.
Linden flowers remain a popular calming herbal tea today, tilleul in France and Lindenbluetentee in Germany, brewed commercially and at home much as it was in earlier centuries, one of relatively few old European nervine herbs to have kept an entirely mainstream, everyday place in modern life rather than being pushed to the margins of alternative medicine. The tree is also one of the most important honey plants of the European summer, its abundant nectar-rich blossom yielding a distinctively flavoured linden honey still sought after by beekeepers and honey connoisseurs, a further practical value layered onto its old reputation as the tree of the village green.
Linden wood, pale, soft and very easy to carve, was also the preferred timber of European wood-carvers and sculptors for centuries, prized above all by the German master carver Tilman Riemenschneider for the fine detail it allowed, so that the same tree valued for shade, honey and calming tea also gave the continent much of its finest religious wood sculpture.