Description
The Cottonwood is a giant! Beautiful and powerful.
There is a bridge near me that was shut down a few years ago, and since then a few years of leaf litter has been deposited on the bridge, creating maybe an inch or two of soil. What trees are growing on the bridge now? Cottonwoods! Turning a bridge back into an ecosystem.
This trees is common in wet areas as well as areas with very low top soil, like eroded farm fields, old parking lots, or old building sites.
While they won’t reach full size in the extremely marginal areas, given some wetter soil to grow in these will become some of the largest trees we have in the East.
The leaves shimmer and sparkle in the slightest wind.
Hardwood cuttings can simply be stuck in the ground in spring.
