Basswood (Linden)

Today we’re talking about a lesser known (but still quite common) leafy green that I highly recommend!

Unlike Brassicas, Mallow, or Dame's Rocket, Basswood is a tree. This makes it a great crop for a perennial staple.

Let’s take a look because I rarely hear foragers talking about this tree:

Plant Profile:

Scientific Name: Tilia americana

Preferred Habitat: Mixed hardwood forests, I tend to find them next to trails, near creeks and streams, or growing deep in shaded moist soil.

Edible Parts: Leaves, flowers, buds

Distribution: Much of the eastern half of the United States, some parts of northern Mexico and southern Canada.

Harvest Season: Spring to midsummer

Key Identifiers: Asymmetric heart-shaped leaves that have a serrated edge that forms a pointed end. Clusters of light yellow (almost butter yellow) flowers that smell like sweet honey.

Toxic Look-Alikes: None that I’m aware of.

Medicinal Properties:

• Reduces inflammation

• Helps regulate sleep

• Diuretic effects

• Might lower blood pressure slightly

• Soothes digestive tract

Uses

Basswood is best used as a fresh green in my opinion and makes a great replacement for lettuce since it’s tender and mild.

The flowers are also edible and can be used as tea, in desserts, in syrups, or just straight up like a salad green.

I like basswood more than lettuce because even decades into the future, it will still be producing edible leaves for you.

The leaves have a very mild lettuce-like flavor that in my mind really does make a perfect replacement for loose-leaf lettuces.

The flowers have another “use” (if you want to call it that) since bees love them, and the resulting honey is considered high quality.

The seeds that form after flowering are also edible but require some processing to make edible (only because they are hard and woody) but from what I hear can taste great in desserts as a sort of chocolate-like paste.

Growth Habits

Basswoods are very long-lived native trees. You can expect a basswood tree to grow for about 150-200 years!

They prefer pretty rich soil and have a fairly low success rate when grown from seed but they can be propagated via cuttings.

When I find them, they are usually in partial shade in forests with rich soil, but that’s not to say you’ll only find them there.

That said, these trees probably aren’t well suited to places with poor soil.

Additional Information

Basswood is also called “linden” and is a fairly common tree to find, but different linden species can hybridize very easily making it pretty hard to tell exactly which species you’ve found. Thankfully, in North America at least, they’re all edible!

The flowers are usually ready to harvest sometime between May in the Midwest, and the leaves can be eaten as long as they’re available on the tree. I find that the young leaves are generally the best to eat, but I’ve eaten older leaves and they’re also palatable enough to eat I think.

The lumber is also good for making cheap things like furniture and office desks.

When left to their own devices, some species of mature basswood trees can get absolutely, enormous with canopies as wide as 50ft!

While that sounds absolutely massive (and it is) there are different sizes of cultivated basswood available!

I would think that like other fruit trees a midsummer prune would keep it restricted to a shorter size, but I don’t have experience there.

Cultivars

There are actually a number of cultivars if you’re looking to grow them. In my reading I have found out about these cultivars but I don’t have a good resource for actually purchasing them (I think they are very old varieties that few people carry anymore if I had to guess) but here they are:

• Nova

• Duros

• Frontyard

• Redmond

From what I gather, the only real differences between them are the shapes of the tree themselves.

Follow me on social media for behind-the-scenes videos and seasonal photos!

Leave a comment to show the algorithm how legit we are!

Thanks for reading The Naturalist. Please share on social media to support the work!