This Swamp Cottonwood is an uncommon tree species. It grows in swamps and bottomlands in a strange native range that starts along coastal Connecticut & southeast New York and goes down the Atlantic Coast to just barely into Georgia, then some spots in northwest Florida, then along the Mississippi River from Louisiana into southern Illinois, then southwest Indiana, then spots in northern & central Indiana and Ohio, and a few spots in far south Michigan. Its favored sites in the wild have wet soil that is acid of pH 4.5 to 6.0 with a good amount of clay in it, but it is adaptable to a number of soils with a pH that is neutral and mesic in uplands, where I found three trees planted on the west side of Morton Arboretum in the Willow Family Collection. It grows in more waterlogged soils than the much more common Eastern Cottonwood.

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