Keyed Out #068 — Tilia americana

Question 1

Its many {stamens} are not free of one another but gathered into five bundles, with petal-like sterile {staminodes} standing between them.

Accepted Answer

mallow family

Question 2

Chew a young leaf or a shred of inner bark and it turns slippery in the mouth, thick with {mucilage} rather than dry and puckering with tannin.

Accepted Answer

Malvaceae

Question 3

Each hanging flower cluster is slung from a strap-shaped papery blade 3 to 5 inches (7 to 13 cm) long, fused for part of its length to the flower stalk itself, which later spins the ripe cluster away like a single-bladed propeller.

Accepted Answer

Tilia

Question 4

The simple undivided blade is lopsided where it meets its stalk, one half of the base running noticeably further down than the other.

Accepted Answer

Tilia

Question 5

The blades run 3 to 8 inches (7 to 20 cm) long and nearly as broad, coarsely toothed, outsized beside the neat small foliage of the street trees planted in the same group.

Accepted Answer

Tilia americana

Question 6

The ripe fruit is a hard woody ball about 6 to 8 mm (a quarter inch) across whose shell is smooth or only faintly raised, never cut into strong lengthwise ridges.

Accepted Answer

Tilia americana