Cottonwood grove

Poplar trees passing from maturity to old age

Grove of cottonwoods at a ranch entrance
in the Nebraska Sandhills, about 1957

Note: As you read this, you must remember that in the Nebraska Sandhills, there are no natural forests. The Sandhills are one of the great prairies of North America.

The grove of cottonwood (Populus deltoides) trees pictured above was the first thing you saw at the Sandhill ranch where I grew up. They towered above the west side of our ranch road, from our mailbox to the first auto-gate.

When my brother and I walked home from school, I liked to crawl under the fence at the mailbox and walk through these trees. I had never walked through a real forest, but I imagined that a forest would be something like this grove -- a quiet place shaded by tall, majestic trees. This mighty stand of cottonwoods seemed much more like a forest than the shelter-belts around our house. In the shelter-belts, the trees were short and bushy, and they grew in rows.

On windy days, I looked up and saw the tops of the trees moving, but the wind was not as strong at ground level inside the grove as it was outside it. Even though the trees were widely spaced, they seemed to slow the wind. My father knew this fact, as well. On bitter winter days, he sometimes fed the cattle their hay under these trees.¹

I brought my children to visit my childhood home in 1999. It had been about 25 years since my parents moved their ranching operation to Missouri, and I left Nebraska. I was shocked to see that many of the trees in the cottonwood "forest" of my childhood were dead or dying. I suppose the grove was planted by homesteaders after they began settling in Duff Valley in the 1880s. A cottonwood rarely lives more than a century. I knew that, of course, but I still imagined that my cottonwoods would live forever.

The same grove of cottonwoods, roughly 40 years later

Related:
Cottonwood trees of my childhood


¹The following paragraph from an Australian farm forestry page describes the same phenomenon:

In the case of scattered trees, the strongest winds tend to flow evenly over the top of the canopies, leaving the wind speeds at ground level much lower over the whole area. Measurements taken amongst widely spaced trees spread across grazing land indicate that reductions in wind speed of 40% over the whole paddock are possible with just 17 large remnant eucalypt trees per hectare, or about 200 young pruned timber trees per hectare. The larger the trees or the greater the stocking rate, the slower the wind speed will be. Such areas may be valuable as stock havens for ‘off-shears’ sheep or developed as special lambing or calving areas. (Source: "Trees for Wind Shelter")

Trees mentioned in property surveys

Surveyors need to know their trees!

This oak tree in rural Christian County, KY,
probably marks the corner of a piece of property.

In 2010, it's still common to read in Christian County newspapers (and all across the Commonwealth) legal  descriptions of property that list natural features as corner markers. Quite often, the natural corner marker is a tree, and quite often, the tree is an oak.

The following paragraph, describing a Christian County property, is quoted from the June 20, 1988, Kentucky New Era.   This property description is noteworthy because it mentions seventeen trees -- and nine different species of trees.  (Emphasis added in the quote below.) 

TRACT VIII
BEGINNING at a red elm on the East bank of Pond River; thence North 67-1/2 East 86 poles to a planted stone; thence South 53 East 68 poles to a white oak and hickory; thence North 77 East 42 poles to a sugar tree; thence North 1-1/2 East 7 poles to a small crooked poplar in a drain, C. L. Pepper's corner; thence South 77 East 60 poles to a hickory and elm, Pepper's corner; thence North 33 East 65 poles to a white oak, Pepper's corner, thence South 27-1/2 East 34 poles to a black oak and sugar tree pointers; thence South 35 East 17 poles to a black oak; thence South 14 East 18 poles to a sugar tree; thence South 25, East 14 poles to a black oak; corner to Park Spring School House; thence South 20 East 34 poles to a white oak, A. Johnson's and Pepper's corner; thence South 41 West 76 poles to a stake and pointers in a line of a 100 acre survey; thence with it due West 16 poles to a stake in A. Johnson's line; thence North 55, West 92 poles to an elm; thence North 63-1/2 West 24 poles to a beech; thence South 49-1/2 West 5-1/2 poles to a box elder on the East side of Pond River; thence down said river with the meanders thereof to the BEGINNING, containing 100 acres, more or less. (Source)

The box elder tree, mentioned in the property description above, stood a good chance of dying before the next time the property was surveyed. If a box elder lives sixty years, it's an old tree. Presumably, it was already a tree of a few years and some size when the surveyor used it as a corner marker.

And what does a surveyor do when the trees in a property deed have died, been cut down, or cannot be found at all? Here are some examples of remedies:

"Beginning at a hickory and sycamore tree called for but now a stone planted..."

"...to a stake, formerly a black oak, standing on the East side of the road..."

"...thence with a cross fence north 6-1/2 west 59-1/2 poles to a dead white oak;"

"...identified by ancient description as beginning at the sugar tree on the bank of Coal Creek, near a spring; thence South 80 East 39 poles to a hickory called for but not found, a white oak marked as a corner..."

" Beginning at a fallen sycamore on the east bank of Coal Creek..."

"...thence south 75-1/2 W. 140 poles to a stone, a dogwood called for in old deed...thence N.E. 19 poles to a stone, a black oak called for..."

"...thence 87 E 84 poles to a stake in the edge of an old field (some black gum bushes and white oak called for, not found)..."

"Beginning at four (4) fallen pin oaks that grew in a two foot crevice between two large rocks (trees are lying there)..."

"...thence with his line South 50 degrees West 40-1/4 poles to a rotted stump, corner of the Jones tract..."

Native Trees with Smooth Bark

Smooth-barked trees for your landscape

Pawpaw (Asimina triloba). Photo by Kurt Stueber

A landscape with a variety of tree barks has visual interest, especially in winter. Trees have many variations in their bark -- color, texture, thickness, etc. When the trees are leafless, the bark becomes a very noticeable feature. This article focuses on trees with very smooth bark.

Unfortunately, trees with smooth bark are appealing to vandals. I've seen beech trees sadly defaced by obscenities, carved with a knife into the smooth bark on the tree trunks. If you're looking for a tree to plant beside the street or road, a smooth-barked tree may not be the best choice.

Many trees have smooth bark as young saplings, but only a few trees retain smooth bark for their entire lives. Here is a list of five native trees with smooth bark, even in maturity:

• American beech -- Fagus grandifolia -- Bark image

• Common witchhazel -- Hamamelis virginiana  -- Bark image

• American hornbeam -- Carpinus caroliniana -- Bark image

• Pawpaw -- Asimina triloba -- Bark image

• Yellowwood  -- Cladrastis kentukea -- Bark image

Also worth knowing

• Poison-sumac -- Toxicodendron vernix -- Bark image

Poison-sumac, a small tree (or shrub), is mentioned here only because it might be useful to know that it has smooth bark for identification purposes. Try not to touch poison sumac at all because twigs, leaves, bark, flowers, fruit, and even the roots contain urushiol. Urushiol is a natural oil that produces a itchy and potentially serious skin rash in most humans. This same oil is found in poison ivy and poison oak.