COTTON TREE. 
121 
[This tree is called the Necklace-bearing or Black Italian Poplar. In 
Great Britain it attains the height of 100 and even 120 feet.] 
COTTON TREE, 
Popuius akgentea . P. ramulis teretibus ; foliis amplis , sinu parvo cordatis, 
obtusis, leviter dentatis, junior ibus tonientosis. 
This species is scattered over a great extent of country, comprising the 
Middle, Western, and Southern States. But it is so rare as to escape the 
notice of the greater part of the inhabitants, and it has received a specific 
name only on the banks of the river Savannah in Georgia, where it is 
called Cotton Wood. The same denomination is applied also to the Caro- 
linian Poplar which grows in the same place. 
A swamp in New Jersey near the North river, about two miles above Wee- 
hawken-ferry, and not far from the city of New York, is the most northern 
point at which I have observed this tree. I have met with it too, in Vir- 
ginia, but less commonly than on the banks of some of the rivers which 
traverse the maritime parts of the more southern States. My father appears 
to have found it still more abundant in the Western Country. Among 
other places, he particularly mentions the environs of Fort Massac, situated 
on the Ohio near its junction with the Mississippi, and a swamp of more 
than six miles in diameter, which are entirely covered w T ith it : this swamp 
is about thirty miles from the river Wabash, on the road from Kaskaskia to 
the Illinois. 
This is a towering tree, wdiich sometimes equals 70 or 80 feet in height 
and 2 or 3 feet in diameter. On trunks of these dimensions the bark is 
very thick and deeply furrowed. The young branches and the annual 
shoots are round, instead of being angular, like those of the Carolinian 
Poplar and of the Cotton Wood. The leaves, while very young, are cov- 
ered with a thick, white down, which gradually disappears, leaving them 
perfectly smooth above and slightly downy beneath. They are borne by 
long petioles, are often 6 inches in length and as much in breadth, of a thick 
texture, denticulated and heart shaped, with the lobes of the base lapped 
