
American basswood is native throughout Indiana and common in mixed mesophytic woods across the central and southern parts of the state. Littleleaf linden is European and one of the most heavily planted street trees in Indianapolis-area subdivisions — often in rows of identical age, which means their structural problems all arrive in the same few years.
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.