[an error occurred while processing this directive]
You are here:
Description
Broad trunk of Populus nigra, the water poplar, with characteristically deeply furrowed dark-grey bark. © F Rumsey
Black poplar trees are robust dioecious tree to 35m tall (usually less) with a wide (c.20m diameter) rounded crown.
- Branches
- stout
- arching often down-curving
- upswept at the tips
- Trunk
- conspicuously bossed
- often inclined
- deeply furrowed dark-grey bark
- diameter at breast height up to 250cm
- Twigs
- glabrous to finely pubescent
- terete, yellowish-brown at first, becoming grey-brown
- sticky with resin
- buds c.10mm, narrowly ovoid, acuminate, shiny, dark brown
- Leaves
- 5 -10 x 4-8cm, rhombic-ovate to trullate
- long acuminate
- minutely crenate-serrate
- with obvious translucent margin
- broadly cuneate to truncate at base
- larger on sucker and coppice shoots
- on short shoots smaller, broader and more deltate,
- dark green above, paler beneath,
- initially bronze-tinted and
- with a distinct aroma
- becoming rather leathery in texture
- without basal glands
- petiole 3-7cm
- pubescent when young, glabrous later
- laterally compressed
- often conspicuously galled
Flowers
- appearing before the leaves in March-April;
- catkins 3-5 x 0.6-0.7 cm
- female
- grows to 15cm in fruit
- pendent
- each flower with a cup-like disc
- subtended by oblong
- deeply laciniate scales,
- membranous,
- greenish or brownish
- soon deciduous
- male
- 12-15(-20)cm stamens
- purplish crimson anthers
- female
- 2 deeply bifid greenish stigmas
- ovary sub-globose, glabrous
- Capsule
- 2-4 valved
- seed minute
- white-fluffy
- numerous but rarely forming in the British Isles
- usually then the result of pollination by other Populus taxa