Poplars 



75 



The cottonwood. The cottonwood, or necklace pop- 

 lar, is found from Quebec to Florida and west to the 

 Rocky Mountains. It produces as fruit little capsules 

 strung along a curved stem like beads in a necklace. 

 They mature and split open in the spring, and the seeds 

 with their cottonlike tufts of hairs are scattered by the 

 wind. They do not wait till the next spring to sprout, 

 but like some maple seeds germinate at once. 



As the cottonwood will grow where other trees do not 

 thrive, it is very widely distributed. On recently formed 

 sand spits in rivers and lakes the soil is too poor for any 



trees except cottonwood ( , 



and willows, for it con- 

 tains no humus, or 

 vegetable mold, such 

 as you can find in any 

 woods where trees have 

 grown and shed their 

 leaves year after year. 

 Generally speaking, the 

 cottonwood is likely to 

 be short lived, but some 

 cottonwood trees are 

 more than a century 

 old and are among the 

 largest trees east of the 

 Rocky Mountains. 



The WOOd. Cotton- H.B.Ayer 



WOOds abound along FIG. 44. Giant cottonwood near Shakopee, 



^trpamc: in tVip nlainct Minnesota. It is over 9 feet in diameter 



Streams in the plains and I30 feet tall . Note the man near the 



where other trees are base. 



