A large tree with massive spreading branches and stout yellow-brown often angular branchlets. Winter-buds resinous, acute, ½′ long with light chestnut brown lustrous scales.
Distribution. Shores of Lake Champlain (Shelburne Point, Chittenden County), Vermont; western New York; Island of the Delaware River above Easton, Northampton County, Pennsylvania; Baltimore County, and Bare Hills, Maryland; northern banks of the Potomac River opposite Plummer’s Island near Washington, D.C.; Artisia, Lowndes County, and Starkville, Oktibbeha County, Mississippi; rare and local.
Populus balsamifera var. virginiana Sarg. Cottonwood.
Populus deltoidea Marsh. at least in part.
Populus nigra β virginiana Castiglioni.
Leaves deltoid to ovate-deltoid, acuminate with entire points, truncate, slightly cordate or occasionally abruptly cuneate at the entire base, crenately serrate above, with incurved glandular teeth, fragrant with a balsamic odor, glabrous, thick and firm, light bright green and lustrous, paler on the lower than on the upper surface, 3′—5′ long and broad, with a stout yellow midrib often tinged with red toward the base, raised and rounded on the upper side, and conspicuous primary veins; petioles slender, pilose at first, soon glabrous, compressed laterally, yellow often more or less tinged with red, 2½′—3½′ long. Flowers and Fruit: as on the type.
A tree, sometimes 100° high, with a trunk occasionally 7°—8° in diameter, divided often 20°—30° above the ground into several massive limbs spreading gradually and becoming pendulous toward the ends, and forming a graceful rather open head frequently 100° across, or on young trees nearly erect above and spreading below almost at right angles with the stem, and forming a symmetrical pyramidal head, and stout branchlets marked with long pale lenticels, terete, or, especially on vigorous trees, becoming angled in their second year, with thin more or less prominent wings extending downward from the two sides and from the base of the large 3-lobed leaf-scars. Winter-buds very resinous, ovoid, acute, the lateral much flattened, ½′ long, with 6 or 7 light chestnut-brown lustrous scales. Bark thin, smooth, light yellow tinged with green on young stems and branches, becoming on old trunks 1½′—2′ thick, ashy gray, and deeply divided into broad rounded ridges broken into closely appressed scales. Wood dark brown, with thick nearly white sapwood, warping badly in drying and difficult to season.
Distribution. Banks of streams, often forming extensive open groves, and toward the western limits of its range occasionally in upland ravines and on bluffs; Province of Quebec and the shores of Lake Champlain, through western New England, western New York, Pennsylvania west of the Allegheny Mountains, and westward to southern Minnesota, North and South Dakota, eastern Nebraska, eastern Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, and southward through the Atlantic states from Delaware to western Florida, and through the Gulf states to western Texas (Brown County). In the south Atlantic states and the valley of the Lower Ohio River and southward sometimes replaced by a variety with leaves covered above when they unfold with soft white hairs and below with close pubescence more or less persistent during the season especially on the midribs and veins (var. pilosa Sarg.).
Often planted for shelter and ornament on the treeless plains and prairies between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, and as an ornamental tree in the eastern United States and largely in western and northern Europe.
× Populus canadensis Moench, believed to be a hybrid between the northern glabrous form of P. balsamifera and the European P. nigra L., with several varieties, is cultivated in Europe and occasionally in the United States. The best known of these varieties, × P. canadensis var. Eugenie Schelle, the Carolina Poplar of American nurseries, believed to be a hybrid of the northern Cottonwood with the Lombardy Poplar, has been planted in the United States in immense numbers.