Lime Trees and Basswoods - 9780521840545

"Tilia is the type genus of the family name Tiliaceae Juss. (1789), and T. x europaea L. the type of the generic name (Jarvis et al. 1993). Members of Tiliaceae have many morphological characters in common with those of Malvaceae Juss. (1789) and both families were placed in the order Malvales by Engler (1912). In Engler's treatment, Tiliaceae consisted mainly of trees and shrubs belonging to several genera, including a few herbaceous genera, almost all occurring in the warmer regions. This treatment wasrevised by Engler and Diels (1936). The family was retained by Cronquist (1981) and consisted of about 50 genera and 700 species distributed in the tropics and warmer parts of the temperate zones in Asia, Africa, southern Europe and America. Several genera of trees, such as Apeiba in South America and Tilia itself, are of economic value for timber, and similarly the herbaceous genus, Corchorus, includes C. olitorius which is grown extensively in Bengal as the source of a brown fibre, jute, used for string, cloth ('hessian'), formerly carpet-backing and paper"--