Plant · P-144

Eastern Cottonwood

Populus deltoides

Eastern Cottonwood is the tree to plant when something needs to get big fast - it grows roughly 5 feet a year and roots for free from a hardwood cutting stuck in the ground over winter. Its leaves are unusually protein-rich, testing about as nutritious as lucerne hay, and its rapid growth makes it a ready source of mulch and chop-and-drop biomass. The wood is brittle and breaks in storms, so it works best as a fast nurse tree meant to be thinned or replaced rather than a permanent one, and it wants at least 50 feet from pipes or a pond dam - the same spreading, sucker-prone roots that bind a stream bank also find drains.