A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1367 entries
cottonwood
The cottonwood is a fast-growing poplar of western and central North American riverbanks, with a broad crown, deeply furrowed bark on old trunks, and leaves on flattened stalks that clatter in the wind. In dry country, a line of cottonwoods is a map of where the water is, since the tree cannot live away from a shallow water table. Seeds are released in early summer inside a mass of white fluff that drifts and piles like snow.
Etymology
The name comes from the seed fluff and is American, in use by the late eighteenth century. It replaced nothing, because the tree was new to English speakers moving west. The Spanish name, álamo, is the one that stuck to places rather than to the tree; the mission in San Antonio was named for a stand of them, and there are Alamosas, Alamogordos, and Los Álamos across the Southwest for the same reason.
Notes
A mature cottonwood can move several hundred gallons of water a day, which is why a grove changes the temperature under it. The seeds are viable for only a week or two and need bare wet silt to germinate, so a stand of even-aged cottonwoods marks the year of a particular flood. Fremont cottonwood is the desert species, and plains cottonwood is the one that follows the prairie rivers.