# Lime flower (Tilia cordata)

*Linden, linden flowers, linn flowers, common lime, French *tilleul*; *Flores Tiliae*; *Tilia europaea* of Grieve; *Tilia cordata* Mill., *Tilia platyphyllos* Scop., and their hybrid *Tilia × vulgaris* Heyne; in pharmacy *Tiliae flos**

**Known today as.** The dried flower clusters of the European limes, tall trees of the family Malvaceae (Grieve’s Tiliaceae), which Grieve says grow to 130 feet and “when in bloom perfumes its whole neighbourhood.” The yellowish-white flowers hang on slender stalks in flattened clusters, the stalk joined for part of its length to a narrow, leaf-like bract; King’s Dispensatory finds the smell agreeable when fresh, faint when dry, and the taste “mucilaginous and sweetish.” The European Pharmacopoeia admits the flowers of *Tilia cordata*, *T. platyphyllos*, *T. × vulgaris*, or a mixture of them.

Kind: Plant

> **Caution.** Not recommended for colds under four or for stress under twelve, for lack of data. If symptoms worsen, or breathlessness, high fever, or purulent sputum appears, the European agency advises seeing a doctor.

## What was it used for?

A tea for colds and for the nerves. Grieve gives lime flowers in infusion or distilled water “as household remedies in indigestion or hysteria, nervous vomiting or palpitation,” and baths of the infused flowers for hysteria. King’s Dispensatory calls the European linden “a common domestic remedy in Europe” for nervous and catarrhal disorders, the infusion given “to allay irritation and restlessness, and to promote rest and sleep,” and hot for colds and catarrh.

## What does modern science say?

The European Medicines Agency’s herbal committee accepts the flowers as a traditional herbal medicine, “exclusively based upon long-standing use,” for the relief of the symptoms of the common cold and of mild symptoms of mental stress (monograph of 2012). Its assessment report records their use since the Middle Ages to promote sweating, their place in the Hungarian, Czechoslovak, Polish, and East German pharmacopoeias, and in German children’s influenza teas; it finds flavonoids, kaempferol, quercetin, and myricetin and their glycosides, chiefly tiliroside, caffeic and chlorogenic acids, and about 3 per cent of mucilage polysaccharides.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **tiliroside**: chief of the flavonoid glycosides, with kaempferol, quercetin, and myricetin
- **kaempferol**: 
- **quercetin**: 
- **chlorogenic acid**: with caffeic acid
- **mucilage**: about 3 per cent, as polysaccharides

**Mechanism.** Not established in the sources read for this entry.

**Standing.** European Union herbal monograph (2012): traditional use, “exclusively based upon long-standing use,” for the symptoms of the common cold and mild mental stress.

## What lore surrounds it?

Folkard, after Ovid, traces the lime to Baucis, wife of the old shepherd Philemon, who unknowingly entertained Jupiter and Mercury in their cottage in Phrygia when richer neighbours had turned the gods away; at their own request the couple died in the same hour, Baucis changed into a lime and Philemon into an oak. The European Medicines Agency’s assessment report adds that lime flowers were once believed so effective against epilepsy that a sufferer could be cured simply by sitting beneath the tree. Grieve names lime as the wood the carver Grinley Gibbons used for St Paul’s, Windsor Castle, and Chatsworth.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Grieve, *A Modern Herbal* (1931).** Linden tea, she writes, is much used on the Continent, “especially in France, where stocks of dried lime-flowers are kept in most households for making ‘Tilleul.’” In the Pyrenees the flowers soothed the excitement caused by the spa waters. She warns that if the flowers used for the tisane are too old “they may produce symptoms of narcotic intoxication.”

## Sources

- Grieve, M. *A Modern Herbal*, “Lime Tree.” As published on botanical.com.
- Felter, H. W., & Lloyd, J. U. (1898). *King’s American Dispensatory*, vol. 2, “Tilia.” Internet Archive, kingsamericandis02kinguoft.
- Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Lime-tree.” Project Gutenberg, 44638.
- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *European Union herbal monograph on Tiliae flos (Lime flower)*. EMA/HMPC/337066/2011, 22 May 2012.
- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *Assessment report on Tiliae flos*. EMA/HMPC/337067/2011, 22 May 2012.
- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *European Union herbal monograph on Tiliae flos (Lime flower)*. EMA/HMPC/337066/2011, 22 May 2012.
- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *Assessment report on Tiliae flos*. EMA/HMPC/337067/2011, 22 May 2012.

---

*Lime flower.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-16. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/lime-flower

Historical description, not medical advice.