| The Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides) is a cottonwood poplar native to North America, growing throughout the eastern, central, and southwestern United States, the southernmost part of eastern Canada, and northeastern Mexico.[1]
It is a large tree growing to 20–40 m tall and with a trunk up to 1.8 m 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, stout, with large triangular leaf scars. The winter buds are slender, pointed, 1–2 cm long, yellowish brown, and resinous. The leaves are large, deltoid (triangular), 4–10 cm long and 4–11 cm broad with a truncated (flattened) base and a 3–12 cm long, flat petiole; 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). It is dioecious, with the flowers (catkins) produced on single-sex trees in early spring. The male (pollen) catkins are reddish-purple, 8–10 cm long; the female catkins are green, 7–13 cm long at pollination, maturing 15–20 cm long with several 6–15 mm seed capsules in early summer, which split open to release the numerous small seeds attached to cotton-like strands |
