Lipa: The Tea Tree

In much of Eastern Europe the linden is simply lipa, and lipa is tea. Not tea as in black tea from far away — tea as in the jar of dried pale flowers that sits in nearly every kitchen, brought down on cold evenings or when someone is sniffling. You might drink it with a spoonful of linden honey, made by bees from the same trees.

There is a huge old linden at the end of our road. For most of the year I don't notice it. Then, for about two weeks in June, the whole street smells like honey, and the tree hums so loudly with bees you can hear it from the porch.

The two-week window

Linden is a lesson in paying attention. The flowers open over a few days, and you want to pick them when about half are open — before they brown, before the rain. Miss it and you wait a year. I keep a note in the kitchen calendar now, and still I'm surprised every June.

The flowers hang under a long, pale, papery leaf called a bract, which goes into the drying basket too. Spread out on paper in a shady room, they dry in a few days into something that smells like summer compressed.

Bark shoes and carved spoons

The linden was more than tea. Its soft inner bark was stripped and woven into lapti, the bark shoes that Russian villagers wore for centuries. Its pale, even wood was the carver's favourite — spoons, bowls, toys, icons. Bees made the most prized honey from its flowers. One tree could furnish a whole household.

Read the full plant notes on the linden page, or make the linden and honey lemonade while the tree is in flower.