in late may/early june you see them flying around in the air. my mom hates them. we always called them "fuzzies", so i still do, but they're actually seeds from the trees of the willow family. In the eastern US, that usually means they come from cottonwoods or poplars.FUZZIES (seeds)
cottonwoods and poplars are pretty easily identifiable for about a week, when they are unleashing hairy shit everywhere and before then, when the fuzzies are growing. The rest of the year can be a little more tricky, but they are easier than most trees, if you know what to look for. In general, they have distinctive leaves that look like kind of like playing-card spades, but with teeth and a really pointy point at the end, especially the cottonwood.
Telling the difference between the two can be a little tricky. The two trees are almost identical. In fact, they are even sometimes crossbred. Luckily, most poplars where i live are white poplars. The white poplar is easy. It has white, smooth bark. Simple enough.WHITE POPLAR
Cottonwoods, on the other hand, always have rough bark. Unfortunately, for identification purposes, so do some poplars... so if you're looking at a tree with rough bark and fuzzies, a quick check is to regard the shape
of the tree.BARK
COTTONWOOD
POPLAR
poplars are tall. cottonwoods are fat.
btw, don't be fooled if you're in a forest, because the cottonwoods can't spread their wings! but their branches will still be fatter relative to thier trunk.
-p
this was a very helpful post, paul. thank you! there was this poplar down the street, and i thought it was a cottonwood all along. what would i do without you?
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