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Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-147
American Basswood
Tilia americana
American Basswood is famous for the bees - mature trees hum audibly for several feet around when they bloom in early summer, giving one of the most prized honeys made. Its young leaves are edible raw in salad, its flowers make a fragrant, sweet tea, and its sap can even be tapped and boiled into a maple-style syrup, though the yield is light. It wants shade and steady moisture rather than open sun, doing best on a cool, sheltered north or east slope or creek bottom, and it is picky about origin - only the southern, limestone-country form tolerates alkaline soil, while northern nursery stock will yellow and struggle. The wood is soft enough that aging trees hollow into nest cavities for woodpeckers and wood ducks, a payoff that arrives decades after planting.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun · Shade
- USDA zone
- USDA 3–8
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Well-Drained · Moderate
Vertical layer
Canopy- Soil pH
- 6–8
- Plant type
- Deciduous Tree
- Mature height
- 60–80 ft
- Mature spread
- 30–60 ft
- Plant spacing
- 30–50 ft
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- Both
Keep exploring
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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