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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-146
Littleleaf Linden
Tilia cordata
Littleleaf Linden is a dense-canopied shade tree that also feeds you - young leaves work raw in salads or sandwiches straight off the branch, and its flowers dry into the classic calming linden tea. Bees flock to it more than almost any other tree, and beekeepers set hives nearby specifically for the prized honey it yields. It needs cool summers, doing best where temperatures stay below roughly 95 F for extended stretches, which limits it to cooler temperate zones rather than a hot-summer climate. Pick only newly opened flowers for tea - older ones have caused symptoms of narcotic intoxication.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 3–7
- Soil
- Loam
- Moisture
- Well-Drained · Moderate
Vertical layer
Canopy- Soil pH
- 4.8–7.2
- Plant type
- Deciduous Tree
- Mature height
- 50–60 ft
- Mature spread
- 35–50 ft
- Plant spacing
- 60 ft
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- None
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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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