
Removing a linden around Indianapolis typically runs $400 to $1,900, with most jobs near $720. Two different trees ride under one name here: native American basswood (Tilia americana), usually a remnant woodland tree on lots carved out of timber, and littleleaf linden (Tilia cordata), the tidy pyramidal European street tree planted by the thousand in Indianapolis-area subdivisions. Which one you have changes the work — basswood suckers hard and often grows as a decay-prone multi-stem clump, while littleleaf stays single-stemmed and compact but is markedly less salt tolerant than the oaks sharing its tree lawn.
American basswood runs 60 to 80 ft with a broad crown; littleleaf linden tops out nearer 50 to 60 ft and stays narrower, so a subdivision littleleaf is usually a mid-bracket removal while a woodlot basswood is a high one. Both are capable of well over a century, but on basswood, heart decay at old multi-stem clumps usually decides the tree long before age does.
Linden wood is only moderately strong and the crown is dense enough to catch ice like a sail, so the classic Indiana failure is an entire codominant leader splitting out of the top of a mature basswood at an included-bark union. Damage tends to be leader and limb tearouts that leave a long strip torn down the trunk, rather than whole-tree windthrow.