Size: tree, 50' average height at maturity
Buds: usually a glossy green, glabrous, blunt-tipped, 2-3 overlapping scales, terminal absent
Leaves: deciduous, alternate, 2-4" long and wide, simple roundish ovate, abruptly short acuminate, finely and sharply serrate with mucronate teeth, shiny dark green above, pale green below, yellow-green in fall
Twigs: glabrous, yellow-green when younger, grays with age, leaf scars slightly raised
Flowers: monoecious, larger and more yellow than those of other Tilias, in 2-4" pendulous clusters of 3-7 flowers, each with a bract
Fruit: small hard woolly nutlets on a pedicel subtended by a persistent large thin bract
Bark: smooth, dull gray with some deep cracks
