Populus deltoides, the eastern cottonwood or necklace poplar, is a species of cottonwood poplar native to North America, growing throughout the eastern, central, and southwestern United States as well as the southern Canadian prairies, the southernmost part of eastern Canada, and northeastern Mexico.
Populus deltoides is a large tree growing to tall and with a trunk up to diameter, one of the largest North American hardwood trees. The bark is silvery-white, smooth or lightly fissured when young, becoming dark gray and deeply fissured on old trees.
The twigs are grayish-yellow and stout, with large triangular leaf scars. The winter buds are slender, pointed, long, yellowish brown, and resinous. It is one of the fastest growing trees in North America. In Mississippi River bottoms, height growth of per year for a few years has been seen. Sustained growth of 5feet in height and 1inches in diameter per year for 25 years is common.
The leaves are large, deltoid (triangular), long and broad with a truncated (flattened) base and a petiole long. The leaf is very coarsely toothed, the teeth are curved and gland tipped, and the petiole is flat; they are dark green in the summer and turn yellow in the fall (but many cottonwoods in dry locations drop their leaves early from the combination of drought and leaf rust, making their fall color dull or absent). Due to the flat stem of the leaf, the leaf has the tendency to shake from even the slightest breeze. This is one of the identifying characteristics.[1]
It is dioecious, with the flowers (catkins) produced on single-sex trees in early spring. The male (pollen) catkins are reddish-purple and long; the female catkins are green, long at pollination, maturing long with several 6to seed capsules (samaras) in early summer, which split open to release the numerous small seeds attached to cotton-like strands. A single tree may release 40 million seeds a season.[2] [3]
The species is divided into three subspecies[4] or up to five varieties. The subspecies classification is as follows:
It needs bare soil and full sun for successful germination and establishment; in natural conditions, it usually grows near rivers, with mud banks left after floods providing ideal conditions for seedling germination; human soil cultivation has allowed it to increase its range away from such habitats.
Unlike related species such as quaking aspen, it does not propagate through clonal colonies, but will resprout readily when cut down.
The leaves serve as food for caterpillars of various Lepidoptera.
The wood of eastern cottonwood is typical of the Populus family in its softness, weighing just 28lb/cuft. It is utilized for things like plywood and interior parts of furniture.
General Custer fed his horses and mules the bark during the 1868–69 winter campaign against Native American tribes south of Arkansas. According to Charles Goodnight, cowboys afflicted with gastric disorders would make an astringent tea from the inner bark.[7]
Eastern cottonwoods typically live 70–100 years, but they have the potential to live 200–400 years in ideal conditions.
The Balmville Tree (felled in 2015 at approximately 316 years old) was the oldest eastern cottonwood in the United States.[8]
The largest recorded cottonwood tree in the world is the Frimley Park tree located in Hastings, New Zealand and measures tall, wide and in girth.[12] This cottonwood was planted in the 1870s.
Calling the cottonwood tree "the pioneer of the prairie", the Kansas state legislature designated the cottonwood the official state tree of Kansas in 1937.[13] It became the state tree of Wyoming in 1947, and that of Nebraska since 1972.[14]