Description:

One of the tallest and most beautiful eastern hardwoods, with a long, straight trunk, a narrow crown that spreads with age, and large showy flowers resembling tulips or lilies.

Height:

80-120'

Diameter:

2-3', sometimes much larger.

Leaves:

3-6" long and wide. Blades of unusual shape, with broad tip and base nearly straight like a square, and with or sometimes 6 short-pointed paired lobes; hairless; long-stalked. Shiny dark green above, paler beneath; turning yellow in autumn.

Bark:

Dark gray; becoming thick and deeply furrowed. Twigs; brown, stout, hairless, with ring scars at nodes.

Twigs:

Twigs

Flowers:

1 1/2-2" long and wide; cup-shaped, with 6 rounded green petals (orange at base); solitary and upright at end of leafy twig; in spring.

Fruit:

2 1/2" long (including narrowing); shedding from upright axis in autumn; the axis persistent in winter.

Habitat:

Moist well-drained soils, especially valleys and slopes; often in pure stands.

Comments:

Introduced into Europe from Virginia by the earliest colonists and grown also on the Pacific Coast. Very tall trees with massive trunks existed in the primeval forests but were cut for the valuable soft wood. Pioneers hollowed out a single log to make a long, lightweight canoe. One of the Chief commercial hardwoods, Yellow-poplar is used for furniture,as well as for crates, toys, musical instruments, and pulpwood.