Cottonwood tree.

dave502d

This tree gave the homeowner nightmares.

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Eric Frei

Hey great!

What the heck did ya do with this log?



Just add it to the burn pile?

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pomme

cottonwood- Black Poplar ?

Eric Frei

Poplar = crap? No?

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dave502d

We cut the log up.

Eric Frei

Dave, the cut up log is for firewood?

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dave502d

We cut it up and gave it to the homeowner.

pomme

what is it s botanical name as i thought poplar were known as cottonwood in the states

dave502d

This article is about the poplar species. For other uses, see Cottonwood (disambiguation).
The cottonwoods are three species of poplars in the section Aegiros of the genus Populus, native to North America, Europe and western Asia.

DBS

there is a family down the road from where i live and those trees make a MESS!!!!

Lawn looks like it snowed..on their lawn only!! HAHAHA

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Steve Tipton

Commonly planted Cottonwood around here is Populus Deltoides, White Poplar.
What we know as Black Poplar is Lombardy Poplar or Populus Nigra.

Streyken

Nice pics. Good job over the house.
Got one of these to do tomorrow - Here they're Cottonwood or Black Cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa) - I hate them.

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Trimmin' bush and caring for flowers is good 'n' all...
but sometimes ya gotta let the big wood fly and pound the garden.

bigshea13

cottonwoods are commonly refered to as poplar in us. the largest tree ive ever removed was a cottonwood. it was almost 140 feet tall and draiped over three homes and a web of utility lines. the wood is garbage and so is the log. people who make maple sugar like it because it burns hot and fast but not for very long. most of the time the wood becomes fill. the tree in the picture under my name is one.

Eric Frei

That picture is called your avatar. Just for those people who might not understand forum terminolgy. I didn't a few years back, some-one asked what I would like for my avatar? Crikey WTF's that I thought.

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Steve Tipton

Ohhhhhh! I thought it was like a HERNIA!

Oldtimer

I used to own a house that had 3 of these nasty hugh trees. In the Summer it was the "cottom" flying everywhere and covering the Air Conditioner Condenser fins so I have to enclose it in a fine screen and rinse it once a week. Them later in the season it was dropping leaves for months so I did have to buy me a leaves blower/shredder and I would spend hours bagging and raking shreeded leaves. I was so happy when I sold that house and moved away from that mess. Sometimes I would just pile the leaves along the street and drive over them to break them up and the hope for them to blow away with the winds ( no luck with that either)!

At the new house one neighbor one block away had one of those trees and the leaves still were able to reach my lawn. Finally, they cut it down
They are very messy and bad wood in a storm. They break into pieces all over in our regular "hurricane size" storms!

TreeDimensional

At the risk of sounding like a smart-a$$ tree hugger, I have to defend the most popular tree in central Saskatchewan, the Populus spp.

These giants grow well in the cold hardiness zone 2b, in which I reside. They can become hazardous if left to grow without crown thinning, and some of the cultivars and clones are short lived. That being said, they are a dioecious,tree. That is there are male and female trees, and the only ones that cast fluff are the females. If you don't like fluff, have your new saplings sexed, end of problem.

There are 12 species that grow here, All have different growth habits, and can be used to provide a number of differant functions. Shade and wind abatement are the two main purposes for growing the things. There has been extensive study gone into the "Walker Poplar". It is a female clone (sterile) and grows an average of 3'/yr. It has been found to make some of the best veneer and plywood money can buy.

Every time we remove one of these majestic giants, I wonder how much more money the client will have to spend on heating and cooling their home.

Underwor

Treedimensional, I will back up your opinion of the cottonwood. In western ND, the ISA puts a species value on them of 80-100%, since they are the only large tree you will get to grow. You just have to use some common sense on where you plant them, so that what falls does not hit something real important. In the eastern part of the state with twice the rainfall and "banana belt" climate, they are rated at about 10%, since there are a lot of nice trees that will live there. I do not have any, since the yard is much too small.

Where are you at in Saskatchewan? I have a graduate who is a climber in Saskatoon. A young lady whom I thought would be a concert saxaphone player, but developed a great love for climbing. Each career change in the past 5 or 6 years has been to a job that allows more climbing in larger trees. You never can tell how a student will turn out. She just loves it.

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Bob Underwood, Associate Professor of Forestry
ND School of Forestry
Minot State University - Bottineau Campus
Bottineau, North Dakota

TreeDimensional

Hey Bob, I had a good chat with you about a year ago. I know of the girl you speak. I am at Richlea, Sask. home of some of the toughest trees in the world. LOL

D Mc

So we will agree with Bob and Tree Dimensional in defence of the much maligned Cottonwood. We also are in an area where they grow huge and unfortunately most people do not keep them up. A little over a century ago Marcus Daly (a copper king from the Anaconda/Butte area) planted hundreds of them lining the carriage ways. They are fast growing and, if maintained, lovely. It is also resistive to breaking dormancy and the issues that poses. In our area, it is not uncommon for the temp to change drastically. Today was pushing 50 deg F, we could subzero at any time.

As TD points out, if the cotton is a problem, check under the skirt and make sure its not a female!

As for the wood, we use it in our home (we cook and heat year round with wood). It is great for starting a fire, banking a fire and if you are cooking at 350 deg or so (like for a turkey) it is great because it maintains an even, lower temp than hardwood.

Just shows, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

D and S Mc

TreeDimensional

I also discovered recently that it is fantastic for milling porosity fencing for cattle and will outlast spruce by a good 5 yrs. But the smell of the slime flux would make a magot puke. LOL

Oldtimer

Are We talking about the same trees here?
The ones here are very tall, grow fairly fast and drop leaves, cotton and branches all over the yards?
I see your point that these trees have a positive value in some places as a source of firewood and as shade if they are the only ones able to grow in a particular environmental situation (Climate and Soils Conditions etc).

BUT there is always a BUT they are nasty right next to a house with small lots (50 by 100 ft) like my old house. They drop leaves and cotton on your yard and on the entire neigboorhood. I have several landowners offer me money to take down the trees growing in my yard so they could enjoy their backyards and pools. One guy built a small pool next to my tree and he hate it! He spent most of his free time pulling leaves from his pool rather than swimming in it!

Anyway as you can see I am not particularly freindly to these trees. If I was buying a house and it had one of those cottonwoods anywhere in the yard or on in the neighbors yards I would move away to look further even if I like the house!

D Mc

If you will note, all of your examples are of people coming in amongst the trees, not vice versa. It would indeed be very foolish to plant a species like a male cottonwood in a small backyard next to a pool. But I don't view that as the tree's fault. Just bad locating.

I have no more sympathy for the person who builds a pool under a tree, than I do for the person who moves in next to an existing airport and then complains about the noise.

Any of the fruiting trees planted by your walkway to your front door would be a bad choice. A weeping willow planted near a septic field, would be a bad choice. In the right locations, these are all nice trees.

We hear a lot of complaints on cottonwoods, Siberian elms, willows; the major complaints being they are messy and they don't live a long time. The messy part is location and maintenance; and fast growing trees should be accepted for the boon that they are, actual shade within our lifetimes.

The bottom line: Right tree, Right place.

D and S Mc

Villazon

I just moved to Los Lunas, NM Cottonwood trees are everywhere, we have a male tree here. How long does the shedding of the cotton last? it's everywhere
but I know it's early in the season still! OMG:

Oldtimer

Those trees put cottom looks like the entire year and after that they drop all their leaves all over and into the neighbors yards, so be ready to rake and bag leves for as long as the tree is there! Ouch!

treeshaveneeds

If your tree is shedding cotton, you have a female tree. It doesn't last that long, it is just the shedding and dispersal of the seeds - generally only lasts 2-3 weeks, unless you have an unusually heavy crop, and then it might extend for another week or two., How heavy the crop is relates to how wet the previous year was, and a droughty previous year often results in a poor crop the following year. However, Cottonwoods are pioneer species and can tolerate a lot of heat and drought, so to have a noticeable effect, the drought needs to be severe, and then you tend to lose other species as well.

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