A tree sometimes 80 to 90 ft high on the continent, usually much smaller in Britain; young shoots glabrous or nearly so. Leaves rounded, heart-shaped, 11⁄2 to 3 in. long, nearly or quite as much wide, with a short tapered apex, sharply and rather finely toothed, dark green and glabrous above; pale, sometimes whitish beneath, with tufts of red-brown hairs in the axils of the veins; stalks slender, glabrous, 1 to 11⁄2 in. long. Flowers yellowish white, fragrant, produced in the latter part of July in ascending or horizontally poised, slender-stalked cymes 2 or 3 in. long. Floral bract 11⁄2 to 31⁄2 in. long, 3⁄8 to 3⁄4 in. wide, glabrous. Fruits globose, covered (especially at first) with a loose greyish felt, not ribbed, thin-shelled.
Native of most of Europe, and of the Caucasus, extending to 63° N in Sweden, and northwest Russia, but in the British Isles confined to England and Wales as far north as the Lake District and Yorkshire, usually on limestone formations. It is less common in cultivation than T. × europaea, its hybrid with T. platyphyllos, but is really more deserving of a place in the landscape than either. As usually seen it is a neat, small tree, but it is long-lived, and in time attains a large size, at least in areas where the summers are warmer than average. The largest specimens recorded in recent years are: Oakley Park, Shropshire, 97 × 173⁄4 ft and 115 × 113⁄4 ft (1971); Whitfield House, Heref., 98 × 11 ft (1973); Tottenham House, Savernake, Wilts, 105 × 103⁄4 ft (1967); Westonbirt Arboretum, Glos., 100 × 71⁄4 ft (1976); The Vyne, Basingstoke, Hants, 105 × 73⁄4 ft (1972); Westleton Church, E. Suffolk, 65 × 14 ft (1968).
For the Shrawley Wood stand of T. cordata near Worcester, see the article by Miles Hadfield in Qtly. Journ. For., Vol. 57 (1963), pp. 35-43.
cv. ‘Swedish Upright’. – Of very slender habit, though with horizontal or drooping branches. It was collected in Sweden in 1906 by Dr Alfred Rehder for the Arnold Arboretum, where the original tree was 35 ft high and 12 ft in spread in 1964 (Wyman, Trees for American Gardens (1965), p. 451).
Another selection of narrow habit is ‘Erecta’, said to make a good street-tree even in industrial areas, with rather small, almost orbicular leaves, colouring yellow in the autumn and remaining on the tree until November (Dendroflora, No. 7 (1970), p. 72).
T. × flavescens Döll – A putative hybrid between T. cordata and T. americana, described in 1843 from a tree growing at Karlsruhe. The trees distributed by the Späth and Simon-Louis nurseries are of uncertain origin. They are near to T. cordata but with larger leaves.