A tree, usually 60°—70°, or sometimes 120°—130° high, with a tall trunk 3°—4° in diameter, small often pendulous branches forming a broad round-topped head, slender smooth glabrous light gray or light brown branchlets marked by numerous oblong dark lenticels, becoming darker in their second and dark gray or brown and conspicuously rugose in their third year. Winter-buds dark red, ovoid, about ¼′ long. Bark of the trunk about 1′ thick, deeply furrowed, the light brown surface broken into small thin scales. Wood light brown faintly tinged with red, with thick hardly distinguishable sapwood of 55—65 layers of annual growth; employed in the manufacture of paper pulp, and under the name of white wood largely used in wooden ware, cheap furniture, the panels of carriages, and for the inner soles of shoes.
Distribution. Rich often moist soil, formerly often in nearly pure forests; northern New Brunswick to the eastern shores of Lake Superior, the southern shores of Lake Winnipeg and the valley of the Assiniboine River, and southward to Pennsylvania, Ohio, eastern Kentucky, southern Michigan, Indiana and Illinois, eastern Nebraska and northern Missouri.
Often cultivated as a shade and ornamental tree in the northeastern states, and occasionally in Europe.
2. [Tilia nuda] Sarg.
Leaves thin, ovate, abruptly pointed at apex, obliquely truncate or unsymmetrically cordate at base, and coarsely serrate with long slender straight or slightly curved conspicuously glandular teeth, as they unfold, dark red and sparingly pubescent on the midrib and veins, glabrous at the end of a few days, without or rarely with small axillary tufts, dark green on the upper surface, pale yellow-green or glaucous (var. glaucescens Sarg.) on the lower surface, 4′—4½′ long and 2½′—3½′ wide; petioles slender, glabrous, 2′—2½′ in length. Flowers opening early in June, about ⅓′ long, on hoary-tomentose pedicels, in broad usually 10 or 12, sometimes 30 or 40-flowered long-branched glabrous cymes; peduncle glabrous, the free portion ⅘′—1¼′ in length, its bract oblong, often slightly falcate, cuneate or rounded at base, rounded at apex, glabrous, 3′—4′ long, ½′—1¼′ wide, decurrent nearly to the base of the peduncle; sepals acute, rusty-tomentose on the outer surface, glabrous on the inner surface; petals oblong-ovate, narrowed at the rounded apex; staminodia oblong-obovate rounded at the broad apex; style glabrous. Fruit ripening in September, subglobose to depressed-globose, covered with rusty tomentum, ¼′—⅓′ in diameter.
Usually a small tree with pale furrowed or sometimes checkered bark, small spreading branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and slender glabrous orange or red-brown branchlets. Winter-buds ovoid, obtusely pointed, dull red, glabrous, ⅙′—⅕′ long.
Distribution. Central and southwestern Mississippi (Hinds and Adams Counties); Dallas County, Alabama; West Feliciana and Calcasieu Parishes, Louisiana, to the valley of the Brazos River, eastern Texas, and to Hempstead County (Fulton and McNab), southern Arkansas; the var. glaucescens with the type, and near Page, Le Flore County, Oklahoma; in wet woods subject to overflow at San Augustine, San Augustine County, Texas, a variety (var. brevipedunculata Sarg.), differs from the type in the less coarsely serrate smaller leaves glaucescent below, in the shorter free portion of the peduncle of the inflorescence and its broader bract. A tree 25°—30° high, with slender glabrous dark red-brown branchlets.
3. [Tilia venulosa] Sarg.
