Thursday, June 30, 2016
Linden
Seen about the middle of June in front of the Masonic Temple on 16th St. NW between S and Riggs:
I think this is a European linden, but it could be one of that linden's American cousins. By now the flowers have dried up and mostly fallen off, and the fruit has appeared. It occurs to me that this is something of a European block as far as the trees go: the other trees in front of the temple are English oaks.
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Well, I think of Coleridge's lime-tree / linden:
ReplyDeletePale beneath the blaze
Hung the transparent foliage; and I watch'd
Some broad and sunny leaf, and lov'd to see
The shadow of the leaf and stem above
Dappling its sunshine!
You probably know this one, but it comes to mind... even more I think of Baucis and Philemon when you mention lindens and oaks before a temple because of Ovid's account about how the elderly couple welcomed Zeus and Hermes. As a reward, Baucis was allowed to become a linden and Philemon an oak when they died, and they grew together as one.
Thank you for the Coleridge: I will have to look that up.
DeleteAnd I will have to follow up the Ovid. Perhaps someone in the Washington, DC, government knows Ovid and so had the notion. The cross country team at Stone Ridge, the Sacred Heart school in the suburbs, has or had a motto (roughly) from Ovid on its shirts, the sort of thing that can happen when a Latin teacher coaches cross country.