Identifying eastern cottonwood

Identifying eastern cottonwood - Populus deltoides
Video created by to for the course NRES 201 - Dendrology to supplement class lectures and field walks.
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[@RocketMyDog1]

Nebraska's state tree.

[@vkahri]

Why didn't you align the commentary with the footage? He's pointing at the bark in the beginning then while talking about the bark you see footage of a hand fondling a branch with leaves and a bud.

[@boomer3150]

I know!

[@ananda_krishnan_r]

Is it possible to grow eastern cottonwood at a temperature of 20-30 degree celsius.......

[@boomer1579]

State tree of Kansas, too and Wyoming!! Beautiful specimen; when we lived in IL, I noticed Oaks had the star-shaped pith as well.
Boomer
2 minutes ago
Alex Wirz
2 months ago
We have some massive cottonwood trees by the creeks in Colorado! So big 3 people cant hug the tree fully
1 woksape7 months ago
Very cool, thank you Don. I believe I saw cottonwood trees in Israel on my trip there in 2014.. my favorite tree..
Brian smith4 years ago
some cottonwoods live 120 years or longer if they have right conditions and are healthy
Boomer 2 years ago (edited)
@Mohag You look like my singer/guitarist, haha. I am a drummer, amateur dendrologist, amateur arborist and a lot of other amateur things.
The tree you mention is likely 150 years old.
While Don Leopold is my favorite dendrologist, I think he's going with the commonly cited "short-lived" appellation. I'm sure he would agree there are many exceptions. I'd like to share a few here.
~Wiki: "Eastern Cottonwoods typically live 70 to 100 years, but..have the potential to live 200 to 400 years if they have a good growing environment."
~A naturalist at North Dakota Outdoors Magazine told me he has seen felled Cottonwoods exceeding the age of two centuries.
~I personally counted over 150 growth rings in an Eastern Cottonwood that had been stupidly (as usual) cut down. It grew at 7751 W Myrtle, Chicago, and had been estimated in 1976 to be 135-years-old by Dr George Ware of the Morton Arboretum.
~"A majestic 300-year-old cottonwood tree greets visitors crossing the Granite Creek Bridge entrance into Prescott Mile High Middle School in Prescott, Arizona. This great tree symbolizes growth, tradition, and adaptation. In 1867, a small log cabin, the first school in Arizona, was built in the shade of this great cottonwood..." -Prescott Mile High site.
~"Located at the west end of Harriet Island Regional Park...stands one of the largest trees in the city, a beautiful eastern cottonwood. Many of the trees in Harriet Island’s flood plain are cottonwoods which are well-adapted to this flood-prone area. When Harriet Island became a park in 1900, the tree had already established itself as a stately shade tree. It’s estimated the tree dates back to the 1620’s. Growing in ideal conditions, cottonwoods have a maximum life span of 200-400 years." -online site
~"A park in Fernie, B.C., protects some of the biggest, oldest black Cottonwoods in the world, interspersed in an old-growth western red cedar forest. Towering as high as a 10-storey building, these trees provide homes for many species, including dens for black bears, nests for the endangered Western Screech-Owl, and habitat for many other songbirds and insects.
"In 2003 this grove of Cottonwood trees was discovered that rival Canada's famed coastal cedars and firs in both age and girth. Scientists confirmed the ages of the trees, putting the oldest at more than 400 years old, and measuring up to 10 metres around. They are by far the oldest known Cottonwoods in the world. Fernie is located in southeast British Columbia, Canada." -online site
~Landscaping With Native Trees (Sternberg & Wilson): "...(Cottonwood trees) are so resilient that some live to take their place among the largest of our deciduous trees. A few of the venerable Cottonwoods that shaded Lewis and Clark on their Journey of Discovery in 1804 are still growing along the Missouri River." (This would estimate their age at about 250 years old.)
~Chicago Sun-Times, April 28 2018: "An eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides) growing in the Byron Forest Preserve District’s new Bald Hill Prairie Preserve is the Illinois Big Tree Champion. It’s estimated to be 200 years old, making it a bicentennial tree, which probably started growing when Illinois became the 21st state in 1818." (This replaced the 175-year-old specimen at Gebhard Woods.)
~Knowing Your Trees (Collingwood and Brush) approximates the lifespan of Cottonwood at about 150-years.
~You can research the prematurely destroyed Cottonwood of William and Beatrice Carmel. It was over 200 years old. We call these older specimens "exceptions"; instead, we really need to increase the average estimated lifespan to perhaps 75-120 years, and considerably more when favorable genetics and environs come into play. I've quoted a few sources on this, but will now instead share the stirring words of Charles S Sargent, first director of Harvard's Arnold Arboretum:
"With its massive pale stem, its great spreading limbs and broad head of pendulous branches covered with fluttering leaves of the most brilliant green, Populus deltoides is one of the stateliest and most beautiful inhabitants of the forests of North America."
Indeed. This species (often disheveled in some older specimens) can rival more "aristocratic" trees in terms of beauty and luxuriant foliage. Author Kathleen Cain rightly calls the Cottonwood an "American Champion".
Vicki Labriola2 years ago
@Boomer Great information, and so true. Like you, I appreciate Don's videos. They prompt one to further investigate tree species. What you have shared here is a great start, as far as the Cottonwood goes.
Vicki Labriola2 years ago (edited)
Brian Smith "Frimley Park Poplar" (Cottonwood) in New Zealand is reportedly the largest Cottonwood in the world, and is (only) 150 years old. The recently "deceased" Balmville tree was 300 yrs old, I think. I was "surfing the web" regarding this tree...Boomer and you are right; to dismiss it as "short-lived" is not entirely fair. Plenty of those on record (and many more NOT on record) exceed the "Peattie prediction" of around 75 years!!!
John Ortmann1 year ago
@Vicki Labriola On the Great Plains at least, how long they live is really controlled by how much wind damage they suffer. If wind takes off a branch more than 6" in diameter, rot gets in and the tree's days are numbered. A tree that somehow escapes wind damage can live a lot longer. But out here, eventually the wind is going to get them.
1 woksape
7 months agoNative Americans say the leaf is the shape of a tepee- is considered sacred...
1 woksape7 months ago
@Boomer most excellent, thank you...they are my favorite tree..
1 woksape
7 months agoI believe I saw cottonwood trees in Israel on my trip there in 2014..
Boomer2 weeks ago
@1 woksape Hello! My notifications never work, and for fun I thought I'd revisit this. They are our favorite tree as well, although Oaks are great. My wife and I appreciate trees in collections, ala arboretums. Going to check out the spiritual warfare site, thank you!
Boomer2 weeks ago
@John Ortmann Truthful information. Many trees escape that fate, however, and persist into over two centuries.
Ark de Canine3 years ago
I've seen these trees sprout under water in nothing but sand. I planted a small potted sapling from Walmart, Siouxland variety (male - no cotton) in a swampy area behind my home a couple years ago. It's about 25 feet tall now. I love watching how fast it grows. I love how massive the trunks get at maturity. They are trees you can't help but ponder on.
Jasmine Pina4 months ago
I just bought this tree
Alpha Centauri3 years ago
I have a hard time hating any tree, but these freaking things mess up my sinuses every year. I don't even have allergies. It looks like it's freaking snowing at my house.
Jeremy McReynolds3 years ago
Actually, if left alone in most of their natural habitats, they regularly live well over 100 years. The only ones I've ever seen dieing young are ones in the urban environment.
Problem is most people and city maintenance cant leave them alone and end up weakening them till they die. This leaves them even more vulnerable to rot, which is really bad as they are a very light wood, not very dense and because they are often confused with a Cottonwood hybrid which is faster growing, shorter lived and more prone to disease. They also seem to react very poorly to industrial fertilizer.

[@oceanwoods]

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