Today I cycled along the Lime tree lined route from home to Amstel Station. So many of the tree canopies along that road are within grabbing height from my bike. Some of the trees are still preparing to open their delicious flowers, others are in full, fresh bloom and still others are setting seed and thus carry fading blooms. These should be avoided by foragers as they are past their best tastewise and may even cause ill health. They also are not stable for drying and I wouldn’t want to preserve them by tincturing or other methods.

The photo above shows a just-fading cluster of Lime tree (Tilia sp.) flowers. Notice the colour of the stamens, stigmas and petals. Fresh, bursting-with-sweet-glutinous-goodness Lime flowers are a crisp, pale cream colour. Those past their best are at first pink/beige then brown. You should be able to see all of these in the photo. If you want to forage Tilia flowers, choose only those in clean locations (well, as clean as possible) which are either about to pop open or are recently open and very fresh looking and tasting.

Here is a link to Linden Schnaaps (basically a very quick tincture).