Small-leaved Lime - Tilia cordata

Large tree to 30 metres. Leaves almost rounded with a heart shaped base, sharply toothed, mostly 3 to 7 cm long.  Leaves with buff-orange hair tufts in the underside vein axils, but orangey hairs may sometimes be found in the hybrid lime, so its isn't a reliable form of ID. . Flowers 7 to 8 mm, yellowish-white and fragrant, in erect or oblique cymes, held above horizontal.  

other limes, especially the hybrid Common Lime

Only record this species for trees with consistently small crown-leaves (3-7cm) and with erect or obliquely erect cymes.

Photos of the flower cymes showing manner of growth

Woodland, but also widely planted, often as the form 'Greenspire'.

June and July.

Deciduous.

Records are widespread over much of England and into Wales.

Locally common as a native species in Charnwood Forest but rare elsewhere in Leicestershire & Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 22 of the 617 tetrads. 

However, it is increasingly being planted, in a form claimed to be aphid-free.

It is on the local VC55 Rare Plant Register as a native plant.  The current checklist (Jeeves 2011) states that it is scarce, but can be locally frequent, as in Buddon Wood, Owston Woods and Swithland Wood.