Populus

One of the largest and fastest-growing native hardwoods of eastern and central North America — a streambank and bottomland tree reaching 50-80 feet (occasionally far more) with a broad, open-rounded crown. Its glossy triangular (deltoid) leaves with coarse marginal teeth and flattened petioles flutter and clatter in the wind, and female trees release the cottony seed fluff that gives the tree its name. Fast, tough, and tolerant of drought and urban conditions, but messy and weak-wooded — Missouri Botanical Garden calls it generally inappropriate for ornamental or urban use, better suited to rural lowspots and stream corridors.

A fast-growing riparian shade tree of the American Southwest — the signature cottonwood of streambanks and alluvial bottomlands from California east to Trans-Pecos Texas. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center describes a broad, open, flat-topped crown of widely spreading branches over whitish, deeply cracked bark, with triangular bright-green leaves that turn yellow in fall. Trees are male or female; the female sheds the cottony seed fluff that gives the genus its name, and the species has been recorded growing 30 feet in a single year.

The most widely distributed tree in North America — a slender, cool-climate deciduous tree famous for nearly round leaves on flattened stalks that flutter ("quake") in the lightest breeze and turn brilliant golden yellow in fall. Smooth greenish-white bark whitens to chalky white with black warty patches as it ages. In the wild, aspens grow in clonal groves rising from one shared root system, so an entire grove can be a single genetic individual, all male or all female.