Flowering Trees & Shrubs Codexery

Populus

A genus of poplars, aspens, and cottonwoods with wind-pollinated catkins.

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GBIF records 1,709,941 occurrence records for this genus as of 14 October 2026.[1] Over 60 species of deciduous flowering plants belong to the genus Populus, which is part of the Salicaceae family and is found naturally in temperate, subarctic, and montane regions across Eurasia, North America, and North Africa, as well as in the tropical highlands of East Africa.[2] The terms poplar, aspen, and cottonwood are English names that refer to different species within this genus.[2]

Scientific classification

  1. CladeTracheophytes
  2. CladeAngiosperms
  3. CladeEudicots
  4. CladeRosids
  5. OrderMalpighiales
  6. FamilySalicaceae
  7. GenusPopulus

Named by L.

Sources: Wikipedia taxobox: Populus (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Quick Facts

Type species
Populus tremula

Facts from the source article.

Biology and range

The bark on young trees is smooth and white to greenish or dark grey, often with conspicuous lenticels.[3] Leaves are spirally arranged, vary from triangular to circular or rarely lobed, and have a long petiole.[3] In sections Populus and Aigeiros, the petioles are laterally flattened, causing leaves to wobble in a breeze.[3] The leaves often turn bright gold to yellow before falling in autumn.[3]

Pollination is by wind, and the fruit is a two- to four-valved dehiscent capsule containing minute seeds with tufts of white hairs for wind dispersal.[4] Poplars of the cottonwood section are often wetlands or riparian trees.[5] In contrast to willows, poplar shoots are stout and possess a terminal bud.[3] The leaves on a single poplar tree can vary greatly in size; side shoots produce small leaves while vigorous lead shoots produce very large ones.[3]

Poplar flowers, which are usually dioecious, emerge in early spring before the leaves and are arranged in long, drooping catkins.[4] Within the boreal forest, aspen trees are considered a highly significant broadleaf component.[5]

What the specialist sources record

In the United Kingdom, poplar is typically grown in a short rotation coppice system for two to five years, with yields up to 12 oven-dry tonnes per hectare every year.[6] Poplar represents a suitable candidate for phytoremediation, having been used to target pollutants including trace elements, PCBs, TCE, and PAHs.[7] Yadav and colleagues, in a 2009 study, detailed a method for achieving high-frequency micropropagation from eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides).[8] Shields were constructed from poplar wood by both the Greeks and Etruscans, a use that Pliny the Elder also endorsed.[9]

In Italy, poplar was the predominant wood chosen for panel paintings, a category that includes the Mona Lisa.[10]

References

  1. GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and occurrence index, Populus (taxon key 3040183). CC BY 4.0 (backbone); counts are facts. gbif.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Populus" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Populus L." (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Populus" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Meikle, R. D. (1984). Willows and Poplars of Great Britain and Ireland. BSBI Handbook No. 4. .; Rushforth, K. (1999). Trees of Britain and rope. Collins . (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Populus" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Meikle, R. D. (1984). Willows and Poplars of Great Britain and Ireland. BSBI Handbook No. 4. .; Keeler, "Our Native Trees and How to Identify Them", Charles Scribner's Sons, 1900, p. 410–412 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Populus" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Meikle, R. D. (1984). Willows and Poplars of Great Britain and Ireland. BSBI Handbook No. 4. . (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Populus" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Aylott, Matthew J., "Yield and spatial supply of bioenergy poplar and willow short-rotation coppice in the UK", New Phytologist, 2008, p. 358–370; Nassi, "Biomass production and energy balance of a twelve-year-old short-rotation coppice poplar stand under different cutting cycles", Global Change Biology Bioenergy, 2010, p. 89–97; Nordborg, "Energy analysis of poplar production for bioenergy in Sweden", Biomass and Bioenergy, May 2018, p. 110–120 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Populus" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Doty, "Enhanced Degradation of TCE on a Superfund Site Using Endophyte-Assisted Poplar Tree Phytoremediation", Environmental Science & Technology, 2017-09-05, p. 10050–10058; Guidi Nissim, "Trace element phytoextraction from contaminated soil: a case study under Mediterranean climate", Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 2018, p. 9114–9131; Werther Guidi Nissim, Alessandra Cincinelli, Tania Martellini, Laura Alvisi, Emily Palm, Stefano Mancuso, Elisa Azzarello, Phytoremediation of sewage sludge con; Justin, "Phytoremediation of landfi en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Populus" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Yadav, "High frequency direct plant regeneration from leaf, internode, and root segments of Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides)", Plant Biotechnology Reports, 2009, p. 175–182 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Wikipedia, "Populus" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: H. A. Shapiro, "The Cambridge Companion to Archaic Greece", Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 69 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  10. Wikipedia, "Populus" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Uzielli, "Experimental studies on the wooden support of the "Mona Lisa"", The Safeguard of Cultural Heritage. A Challenge from the Past for the Europe of Tomorrow. COST Strategic Workshop, July 2011, p. 367 p (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Populus (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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