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The lime tree puzzle
15 August 2010
When I crush a leaf from my lime tree, it smells deliciously of lime, like its fruits do. And its fruits, when it graces us with them, are richly aromatic and unmistakably lime-scented. When you cut into one, you can smell it across the room, and the scent from the oils will linger for hours on your fingers.
Yet today, with it in full bloom in this late summer afternoon, its flowers smell of a fragrant perfume, almost like jasmine. Standing under the porch where it sits by our door, the scents gather and as I walk by, lift up to greet me. If I didn't know it was a lime tree, I would not be able to identify it by by the sweetness of its flowers.
It's a mystery to me, why the flowers don't smell like the sap or the fruit. I'm sure Darwin or one of his followers like Dawkins or Gould, would have an answer as to why the plant has such a dichotomy of odours. To me, it's simply a mystery.
Perhaps it's a mischievous bit of evolution: the lime tree can travel further afield from the warm-climate insects that normally pollinate it because it mimics scents that attract local insects that would normally not be drawn to a citrus aroma. Canadian bees are being fooled into acting as sexual intervenors by the lime's perfume.
Our tree is, I believe, the species known as Key Lime, or Citrus aurantifolia. I can't be sure, but the Key Lime is one of the most common varieties, and is popular as a home-gown plant, so it makes sense that's what it is.
We bought it as a sapling at the local Loblaws store one summer, a dozen years ago. It wasn't even properly labelled, just called a "tropical plant." We knew from the shape and look of the leaves it was a citrus plant, but until I broke a leaf and sniffed the oils, was not sure if it was lime, lemon or orange.
Since then it has grown to about four feet tall, and about as wide. It winters indoors, but in the summer goes outside. The last couple of summers have not been good to it, but this year on the front porch it has thrived, with lots of light, new growth, and a garland of blossoms that portend a rich crop of limes this winter.
Yes, we do get limes from it - full-sized, up to two inches in diameter. We've had a crop of as many as two dozen some years, but other years we're happy to get three or four. The last two years we've had none at all, but the richness and quantity of this year's blossoms gives us hope for a bumper crop this winter.
There's nothing quite so evocative as plucking a lime from your own tree, cutting it into wedges and squeezing one into a beer. It speaks to us of Mexico, where a plate of lime slices accompanies every meal. The house where we stay in Zihuatanejo used to have a courtyard lime tree we could pluck fruit from when we stayed there. When the snow is swirling around thigh-deep outside, that lime from our own tree gives us a moment to treasure those Mexican memories.
Yet today, with it in full bloom in this late summer afternoon, its flowers smell of a fragrant perfume, almost like jasmine. Standing under the porch where it sits by our door, the scents gather and as I walk by, lift up to greet me. If I didn't know it was a lime tree, I would not be able to identify it by by the sweetness of its flowers.
It's a mystery to me, why the flowers don't smell like the sap or the fruit. I'm sure Darwin or one of his followers like Dawkins or Gould, would have an answer as to why the plant has such a dichotomy of odours. To me, it's simply a mystery.
Perhaps it's a mischievous bit of evolution: the lime tree can travel further afield from the warm-climate insects that normally pollinate it because it mimics scents that attract local insects that would normally not be drawn to a citrus aroma. Canadian bees are being fooled into acting as sexual intervenors by the lime's perfume.
Our tree is, I believe, the species known as Key Lime, or Citrus aurantifolia. I can't be sure, but the Key Lime is one of the most common varieties, and is popular as a home-gown plant, so it makes sense that's what it is.
We bought it as a sapling at the local Loblaws store one summer, a dozen years ago. It wasn't even properly labelled, just called a "tropical plant." We knew from the shape and look of the leaves it was a citrus plant, but until I broke a leaf and sniffed the oils, was not sure if it was lime, lemon or orange.
Since then it has grown to about four feet tall, and about as wide. It winters indoors, but in the summer goes outside. The last couple of summers have not been good to it, but this year on the front porch it has thrived, with lots of light, new growth, and a garland of blossoms that portend a rich crop of limes this winter.
Yes, we do get limes from it - full-sized, up to two inches in diameter. We've had a crop of as many as two dozen some years, but other years we're happy to get three or four. The last two years we've had none at all, but the richness and quantity of this year's blossoms gives us hope for a bumper crop this winter.
There's nothing quite so evocative as plucking a lime from your own tree, cutting it into wedges and squeezing one into a beer. It speaks to us of Mexico, where a plate of lime slices accompanies every meal. The house where we stay in Zihuatanejo used to have a courtyard lime tree we could pluck fruit from when we stayed there. When the snow is swirling around thigh-deep outside, that lime from our own tree gives us a moment to treasure those Mexican memories.
