The Littleleaf Linden

Spokane's Heritage Tree Register cannot decide what this tree is. Its own record title calls it a littleleaf linden; the description field for the same entry calls it an American linden, a different species entirely. Littleleaf linden, Tilia cordata, is a small-leaved European import common on American streets. American linden, Tilia americana, is a native basswood with leaves nearly twice the size. Nobody has resolved which one is actually growing in the Moore-Turner gardens, and this page will not guess for them. If you can tell the two apart from the leaf, tell us. What both records agree on is the history. The register dates it to the late 1890s, planted in the private garden Frank Rockwood Moore and Senator George Turner laid out before it was ever a public park, which makes it roughly the same age as the terraces and the disputed elm nearby. At around 110 years old and 29 feet tall, it is a modest tree next to the elm and the roses, the kind of planting that only gets noticed once somebody starts asking what everything in an old garden actually is. The gardens keep seasonal hours: 16 May to 15 September, Tuesday to Sunday, 9am to 3:30pm, locked the rest of the year.