The Jonsboda Lime

The tree that gave its name to Linnaeus

Carl Linaeus’s father, Nils Ingemarsson, grew up in Jonsboda in Vittaryd parish in the province of Småland. While studying for the priesthood in Växjö he took the surname Linnaeus after a lime (”lind” in Swedish) that grew in a ”stone cairn” at his family farmstead. When his son Carl Nilsson Linnaeus was ennobled in 1762 he took the name von Linné.

The last trunk of the Jonsboda lime fell in 1823. However, numerous new shoots and trunks developed as suckers from the root. In 2005, material from this lime was propagated at the SLU research station in Alnarp, under the leadership of Rune Bengtsson.

In the Linnaeus Garden grows one of these propagated lime trees, presented to the garden in June 2010 by SLU Alnarp at the initiative of the society Linnés Skogliga Bröder (”Linnaeus’s Brothers of the Forest”).