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Branding with the linden tree

On air travel and climate change from the Christian Science Monitor:
"Efficiency is only set to improve at 1 or 2 percent per year at best, while the number of passenger kilometers is growing at 5 or 6 percent," says Peter Lockley, head of policy development at the Aviation Environment Federation, a British think tank. "So emissions are going up steadily in the gap between the two."
On a recent Delta Airlines flight we saw the above advertisement. You'll notice that the leaves in the ad are those of a linden. We wondered why the ad agency selected linden leaves. Aren't maple and oak leaves more recognizable? Hoping to find out more, we searched the internet but did not find any information about this ad campaign. 

However, we did learn that Carl (Carolus) Linnaeus, the father of botany, was named for the linden tree! Here's a version of the story from Wikipedia:
Linnaeus was born in the countryside of Småland, in southern Sweden. His father was the first in his ancestry to adopt a permanent last name; prior to that, ancestors had used the patronymic naming system of Scandinavian countries. His father adopted the Latin-form name Linnaeus after a giant linden tree on the family homestead.
The wiki entry is supported by Edmund Otis Hovey in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (Volume 18) and by Edward Lee Greene in Carolus Linnaeus (both found via Google Books).  Here's the link to Delta's environmental fact sheet.

Comments

Les said…
How cool that Father Linnaeus opted for a tree as the families name.
Urban Gardens said…
I love how that sparked your curiosity enough to research the Linden! You've supplied me with a bit of trivia to make me sound like I know about botany at my next cocktail party!
Georgia said…
Lindens were the first trees I learned to positively identify. I think learning about trees was fated; the root of Silvera is sylvan (forest, woodland, etc.).