A large deciduous shade and street tree of southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia, reaching about 50-70 feet with a dense, symmetrical pyramidal-to-oval crown. Its signature trait is the foliage: heart-shaped, finely toothed dark-green leaves whose undersides are clad in a silvery-white woolly down, so the whole canopy shimmers and flashes silver as the wind turns the leaves. In early summer it carries clusters of small, pale-yellow, intensely fragrant flowers — each cluster hung from a narrow leafy bract — that are a renowned nectar source and have long been dried for linden ('lime-flower' / tilleul) tea, ripening into small nutlets. It is one of the most heat-, drought-, and pollution-tolerant of the lindens, which has made it a favored urban and avenue tree where its tougher relatives struggle.