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Salicaceae family
Plains Cottonwood (subsp. monilifera) Populus deltoides subsp. moniliferasubspecies
Native
Plains Cottonwood (subsp. monilifera) is a perennial tree native to Canada and the lower 48 states. It grows to 85 ft and blooms Apr in part shade – shade, with white fruit. A keystone plant for native insects and the food web.
Derived (allometric) — width = height × functional-class crown ratio fit on USDA Urban Tree DB · Tallo; method per Jucker et al. 2022, Pretzsch et al. 2015 — Mature width
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Growth Rate / Spread / Growth Form / Lifespan / Active Growth Period / Seed Period — Spread · Growth rate · Growth form · Active growth
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
USDA PLANTS — FoliageTexture — Foliage
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fruit/Seed Color / Fruit Persistence — Fruit
Lifespan: USDA’s lifespan scale for trees: short = under ~100 years · moderate = 100–250 · long = over 250. Balsam fir and other short-lived conifers are genuinely short for a tree, not short like an annual.
Height
85 ft
Mature width
~ 51 ft wide DERIVEDderived estimate — open-grown crown allometry (height × growth-form ratio); not a measurement
Spacing
7–16 ft apart from USDA planting density
Spread
Moderate
Growth rate
Rapid
Growth form
Single stem
Lifespan
Perennial · short-lived
Foliage
coarse texture
Active growth
Spring & summer
Fruit
White
In the garden
Sources · In the garden
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Propagation Method / Commercial Availability — Propagate by · In the trade
Sow timing keys off your local last- and first-frost dates.
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a
guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.
❧ Caterpillar hosts~367 caterpillar species · keystone genus▸
Populus supports ~367 caterpillar species.
Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most
songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is
a powerhouse genus.
Recorded feeding on Populus in North America, including:
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
Same genus / family, ranked by ecological value — from the PlantKey catalog
How we know this (1)Methods & honest limits ▸
Mature widthDerived
For woody plants that have a height but no measured crown, we estimate width = height × a crown-to-height ratio fit for that plant’s form (conifers narrower than broadleaf trees, shrubs widest), calibrated on our measured open-grown crowns and capped at the largest one ever measured. A measured crown always wins; herbaceous plants get nothing (no anchor).
Honest limits: A coarse class-median estimate for garden-scale spacing, not a measurement; woody single/multi-stem forms only.
Allometric basis: Jucker et al. 2022 (Tallo); Pretzsch et al. 2015; McPherson et al. 2016 (USDA Urban Tree DB).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation.
Full methodology →
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this pageOpen data, please attribute ▸
PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).
