American Linden/ Common Basswood
Tilia americana

Size: 22.5 - 30 m (75 - 100 ft), large canopy tree.

Leaves and Flowers: Leaves are alternate, simple, heart shaped (cordate) to egg shaped (ovate), uneven base, coarsely toothed, with a shiny underside.

Flowers appear as pale yellow flat topped clusters on the tip, 5-7.5 cm (2-3 inches) across, hanging 5-10 blossoms per cluster, fragrant. Monoecious (both stamen and pistil on the same plant).

Habitat: low, rich woods.

Range: New Brunswick and southern Quebec to the eastern shore of Lake Superior and west to the Assiniboine River of Manitoba and the central parts of the Dakotas and Nebraska, south to northern Missouri, central Illinois, Indiana, eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, the District of Columbia, and Delaware.

Uses: The inner bark was used to make a long and tough fiber for bags and cloth that looks similar to raffia today. The twine made from the bark was also used to hold together elm bark canoes. The inner bark was stripped away from the tree in the spring, put into cold water and left to rot about a month (retting). Then it was pounded into long strips. This stripping of the inner bark would kill the tree, but the roots would sprout new saplings and regrow the tree.

Sticks, 22 cm (10 inches), were also made from the inner bark for blackening the faces of Sauk boys during their winter fast. From fall to the singing of the frogs in the spring, the boys would eat only one meal per day and old men would lecture them on their duties to the tribe. The sticks, called Mu'ku'te wi'teiku'n, were blackened, used on their faces during the fasting period, and hung in the lodges with other sacred objects when not being used.

Threads of Basswood bark were used to stitch together mats made of cattail leaves, and the bark, perhaps because of its stickiness, was used to bind up a warrior's wounds.