Hungarian silver linden

Tilia tomentosa is a large deciduous tree of the Malvaceae family, typically growing 20 to 35 metres tall, with a straight trunk, a broad, dense, dome-shaped crown and smooth grey bark that becomes shallowly fissured with age. The alternate, long-petioled leaves are broadly ovate to nearly circular, 5 to 12 centimetres long, with a sharply serrate margin, an obliquely cordate or truncate base and an abruptly acuminate apex; the upper surface is dark green and glabrous while the lower surface is densely covered in a soft, silvery-white stellate tomentum that gives the tree its characteristic shimmering appearance when leaves flutter in the wind. In midsummer the tree bears strongly fragrant, pale creamy-yellow pendulous cymes of five to ten flowers, each about 1 centimetre across, attached to a long, oblong, papery, pale yellow-green bract that aids wind dispersal of the fruit. The fruit is a small, ovoid, downy grey-green nutlet 8 to 10 millimetres long. Native to southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia, it grows in mixed broadleaf forests on rich, well-drained soils.