I have seen a few linden trees in the area. At a certain time of year I notice those funny dangling bracts that they grow. After you have spotted one also the dark green of the leaves is noticeable. They had them on the school grounds of the Joplin high school that was destroyed and carved the trunks into Joplin Eagles. There are a few in Nathanael Greene/Close Memorial Park in Springfield. I noticed the Japanese beetles loved them. If you want one I would investigate the varieties and buy the best. A small tree seems expensive but the wrong tree is a pain that you have to live with for years.

I was afraid I would miss my huge walnut that I had taken out and now I wish my other smaller walnut was some other kind of tree. I just picked up walnuts and the wind and rain knocked more down. My friend's tree has sweet gum balls that we have to pick up all winter. It doesn't shed them all at once and the balls are sharp for neighbors children playing. They fall in the neighbor's yard also. This neighbor has two half dead ratty silver maples that we keep hinting for her to remove. Silver maples are terrible about falling branches so don't let any of those over your house.

Joplin has had lots of charity work on building houses. I keep telling my friend some charity needs to get in the tree removal business. Joplin is full of dangerous looking dead and half dead trees. Not all of it is from the tornado. I think the last two years of drought and unusual weather might have something to do with it. Also in a bad economy people don't have money for tree service which is rightfully expensive. Those people need good insurance and good equipment and knowhow. I don't begrudge them asking for lots of money but it hurts to pay it.

Oh, yeah, my mother bought a silver maple before I was old enough to go to school, planted one on both sides of the lane on the farm where we lived in KS. When we moved to OK, she found seedlings (or suckers) under the trees and brought one to our little house in OK. The farm was sold. I'm 60 years older now, and recently paid a visit to the little house where I grew up and where my parents lived until they went to the nursing home and then died. It has been used as a rental for quite a few years and now is nearly in ruins from neglect. The silver maple has been cut down but there are little suckers all over and not just in the near vicinity of where the tree was, either. I would never recommend a silver maple to anyone, ever.

You know how, when nurseries "discover" and "new and different" tree, they market it on its good points and my mom had fallen in love with how the silver maples glittered when the breeze blew through their leaves. Over the years she grew to hate the way they suckered up though. I suspect the sweet gum trees were the same situation, as there were many of them in my neighborhood (and one in my front yard) at the house where I raised my children. That neighborhood was once where the "up and coming working class" lived -- well made houses with hardwood floors and brick fireplaces, ca 1940/50. And I do remember how everyone just HAD to have a Bradford Pear tree about in the 1970/80's. I've seen storms lay them flat on the ground and yank their roots out of the ground. They are a beautiful tree when in bloom but they do break and/or uproot easily.

I don't think the silver linden is anything like the silver maple, though.

Lindens are a great tree, if I could only have one tree I think that is what I would plant. Kansas City uses them for street trees and they are beautiful. I remember seeing one on the north end of Joplin, about Pearl and N 3rd or somewhere up that neighborhood, blooming in June. Smelled wonderful.

Sandy

I don't remember seeing Linden here (in NE OK) but I will keep my eyes open now that I know what to look for. Been doing a little more online research, apparently the leaves turn yellow in the fall and they are heart-shaped. Then of course the blossoms are a dead giveaway in the spring. I still haven't found anyone reliable that sells them, they are quite expensive from several sources and all that I've found of those, so far, get pretty poor ratings on Dave's Garden Scoop. ArborDay sells them, and quite reasonably, but more than likely they are very small. That said, it might be my only option. I've ordered from ArborDay before, had about 50% success with their "free trees" that they send for ordering. I ordered Arbor Vitae and lost every one of them, took pine trees as my "free" trees and lost most of them. A couple of times I took a variety of flowering trees and I can't keep the Dogwood or the Golden Rain alive, although I got a Golden Rain at a plant swap last spring and it is thriving. Some of the fruit trees I ordered from them turned out not to be the varieties I ordered, some of them have not fruited yet so maybe they won't be what I ordered, either, I don't know.....

I'm dabbling in herbal remedies and have been watching Susun Weed's You-Tubes. I don't really go in for some things she talks about, but I'm interested in the healing tinctures she makes, especially the one using Linden flowers and the one using hawthorn berries. Both are for a healthy heart. These berries / flowers can be ordered already gathered and dried, maybe that's the way to go if that's all I wanted from the Linden tree. But it sounds like such a beautiful tree and such a good bee nectar source, and I do have room to grow one, so I'd like to try.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Women's Connection Interview With Susun Weed

I have never seen a Linden tree that I knew what it was even though the American basswood, tilia americana . is a native.

The fact that the Japanese Beetles love it would keep me from getting one!

I still long for the native chionanthus virginicus,Fringe Tree.

I planted a linden tree years ago and it died, but a previous tree in that spot died. I remember looking them up and I think there were more and less desirable types of linden. I am surprised they let you say dave's here. I used to look for fragrant plants and still do so I was looking for lindens a few years ago. Also carvers are interested in them and we used to know a wood carver.

There was another one in Joplin on my route to Lowes besides the ones at the high school. It was a very dark green tall tree. If you weren't looking for lindens you wouldn't notice them because there aren't many.

The year I saw the stripped leaves at the park was one of the worst for Japanese Beetles; those were about 20 foot tall trees.

My experience with mail order bare root trees is that they catch up and pass the larger trees with a rootball. Dogwoods want a particular type of microclimate and get borers so I am not surprised one died. You have to keep small trees watered and we had two years of terrible weather for establishing plants. It is better to spend money when you get a tree if that is what it takes to get what you want.

Here is a link that might be useful: linden

This post was edited by helenh on Wed, Oct 16, 13 at 11:19

Glenda, Linden and American Basswood, same thing. Japanese Beetles are supposed to love maple trees, too, and they were all over ours but they didn't do very much damage, to my utter dismay. Seemed like there were hoards of them, they flew back and forth between the maples in the front to the corn and sunflowers in the garden in the back. No loss that I could attribute to them, more damage from squash bugs and grasshoppers this year, actually. Strange, isn't it? I hope next year isn't worse.

According to what I have seen, it's not recommended to try to start Linden from seed because it doesn't stay viable very long, once off the tree.

Helen, Glenda will attest that Hubs and I have both worn ourselves smooth trying to keep trees watered through two summers of drought. Lots of rock in the ground doesn't help, makes water drain away really fast. One of those many challenges that make gardening and landscaping a lot harder than lots of people think it is...

I have rocks and "good" drainage too. I planted two cherry trees last year. One was a tiny bareroot mail order plant the other was from Lowes with a wrapped ball in a black plastic pot. The instructions said not to take the wrapping off but I did. When I tried to keep them watered it got to the small roots placed directly in my soil but seemed to roll off the one that came with a root ball. That is just my experience with just two trees although my other little cherry bushes also came as twigs and grew fast.

Well, now that's something to think about. I got my Harry Lauder's Walking Stick in a burlap-wrapped ball that was then in a pot. Oh, it was horribly pot-bound. The spot where I decided to plant it was a very, very unusually good spot. I unwrapped the "top" of the ball but the roots were so grown into the burlap I wouldn't have been able to separate it without killing the plant. So I just trimmed off what was loose with scissors and planted the ball. We've had rain this year and have watered it well when we have not and it's done very well.

Normally when I get something in a pot, I will loosen the roots from the bottom and sides with my finger, and if they are too ingrown to dislodge that way, I slice about 1/2" deep channels down the side of the rootball about 3" apart. I saw this done by some expert and I was afraid to do it for a long time but it really does work. Before that when I would dig up a dead plant, I'd find that its roots, even without the pot, would just continue to go round and round.

Some plants just chug along no matter what we do. For me, those are usually weeds. Heh.

Is there no end to what there is to learn? I guess not. Seems like I learn something, from someone (or several someones) every day.