When my mother moved into a house across the street from us - site unseen- she was disturbed to see two huge cottonwood trees in the backyard. While they provided ample shade for a ranch styled house without central air, they were not her tree of choice. They dropped twigs twelve months a year, guzzled water, their thick roots made the lawn mower buck and their leaves, inches deep on the ground in the fall, were not suitable for mulch.
On the other hand, a close relative to the Aspen, their heart shaped leaves rustled in the breeze, provided nesting and cover for suburban birds and gave the squirrels trigs to chew off and throw to the ground.
The plains cottonwood, Populus sargentii, is a member of the willow family, which includes poplars and aspens. The cottonwood leaves, which can be 2 or 3 inches long by 3 to 4 inches wide, quiver in the wind as do those of the aspen, so favored in Colorado. They are deciduous trees, losing their leaves in the fall. They also may be male or female trees. Nurseries sometimes recommend male trees to city dwellers, to eliminate the drifts of brown seeds with white downy parachutes settling in gutters, lining the driveway edges and occasionally the picnic lunch.
Some trees live longer than others. The fast growing Lombardy poplars planted by our neighbor were very short lived. Our children planted seeds from an apple snack in two plastic cups. They still grace our back yard 40 years later. The pines and spruce trees next door are huge and show no signs of giving up the ghost any time soon. Elms and birch and soon the ash have been killed by disease throughout the metro area in different waves, in different decades. But I have been talking about landscape trees.
Cottonwoods are native to the plains, growing near water sources, with trunks of 6 or 7 feet in diameter and leaves reaching 60 to 90 feet in height. The Indians and settlers alike sought their shade and used their wood for fuel and tools. They are not pruned or pampered. They have been shaped by wind, fire, drought and used by man and animal. They have character.
When my mother's cottonwoods had broken from the weight of early snows, become stressed and weakened by Colorado drought and water restrictions, become a hazard to her home and power lines, she chose to have them taken down.
We have had a love-hate relationship with these two big trees. I am sad they are gone. Their leaves have been pressed in many telephone books, saving their fall color, intricate scars and beautiful veins. Mom's grandchildren and great-grandchildren have raked piles of October leaves and burrowed and jumped into them, just as children of her own generation did.
The catkins, soft and dangling, elongate, developing seed pods and fall to the sidewalk leaving bluish, purple stain. Their thick bark is light brown and deeply grooved like heavy truck tires. I want to remember and celebrate the enjoyment I have had from really looking at these trees in their entirety and their individual parts in detail, enjoying their wonder. I took the time to 'smell the roses' while they were part of our daily experience.
I would like to recommend reading Robert Michael Pyle's
The Thunder Tree. It is an exceptional natural history and person story about the Highline canal in Denver. In his chapter on the thunder tree, Mr. Pyle tells the story of the five pointed heartwood star in the cottonwood twigs broken at the node. The Arapahoe believed the night sky would be refilled with stars from the cottonwood twigs that were broken by the winds. It is fun to try to find a star-stick after a storm.
