Native Indiana Tree of the Week: Swamp Cottonwood (Populus heterophylla)

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Swamp Cottonwood has always been one of my favorite trees. The big Catalpa-like leaves that are white & covered in down on the undersides (with down on the young stems & leaf stems) have always be an attractive & noteworthy attribute of the tree. Its towering height to +100’ in the swamps with often a buttressed trunk made it one of those trees I enjoyed finding because too often it was sort of overlooked I felt. When traveling from southwest of Bloomington to Evansville or southwest of Bloomington to St. Louis as a kid, I could always pick the tree out in the swamps along I-64 in southern Illinois & in the swamps around the Patoka in southwestern Indiana. I then encountered it at Twin Swamps in Posey County with its cottony seed falling like snow & covering the amber swamp water like snow in May. I could spot it south of SR 358 & SR 57 near home growing in a swamp in the edge of the White River bottom. It always stuck out like a sore thumb when I traveled down the highway, its large foliage spreading out amidst the Pumpkin Ash, Silver Maple, Green Ash & Pin Oak. Like at Twin Swamps, wherever you find Swamp Cottonwood, you always have other species that like swamps & very wet feet all around you. In southwestern Indiana, you always find it with more southern trees, but you also find it farther north too.