I've introduced myself in a few different forums over the past few day, but a quick intro....We bought our house June 2012 from a gentleman who's mother had recently past. She had lived in this house since the late 40s/early 50s, and had a few nice flower beds. They're a bit over-grown now, but I'm working on them. As plants come up and start to bloom, I'm sure I'll be here a lot looking for IDs.

The first one is this giant tree. It's seriously huge. It takes 3 adults to circle it. I've heard some people call it a cotton wood, others called it a ... poplar, maybe. Here she is.

Full length


Buds


Bark


I know I have more pictures of it somewhere, let me keep looking

Any leaf photo's? Maybe Populus deltoides (Eastern Cottonwood)?

http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/trees/h...

http://dendro.cnre.vt.edu/dend...

http://www.wildflower.org/plan...

plantladylin - I could have sworn that I had leaf pictures, but can't find any right now. I need to dig out my external hard drive, but I think most of those pictures will be of the leaves in the background of other pictures. Looking at your links, the leaves do look very similar to the cottonwood.

The branches seem a lot droopier than the cottonwoods you linked to and I've never noticed it actually getting 'cottony', but will definitely keep my eyes out for that this spring. It seems to get its leaves earlier in the spring than the hickories, but also lose the leaves earlier.

TaStahl said: I've never noticed it actually getting 'cottony', but will definitely keep my eyes out for that this spring.

Eastern Cottonwoods are dioecious, meaning each tree has either male or female flowers, not both. If your tree is male, it wouldn't produce the cottony seeds that cottonwoods are famous for.

For what it's worth, it does appear to be Eastern Cottonwood. Beautiful trees when they reach that size, aren't they?

KentPfeiffer said:

Eastern Cottonwoods are dioecious, meaning each tree has either male or female flowers, not both. If your tree is male, it wouldn't produce the cottony seeds that cottonwoods are famous for.

For what it's worth, it does appear to be Eastern Cottonwood. Beautiful trees when they reach that size, aren't they?

Hi Kent, thanks for that clarification. I really, really like this tree. Saying it's the reason we bought the house would be a stretch, but it was definitely a selling point!