THREE EUROPEAN POPLARS IN CULTIVATION IN AMERICA A. Leaves bright green, lined with white down, irregularly lobed and toothed.
(Populus alba) ABELE Or SILVER-LEAVED POPLAR AA. Leaves dark green on both sides, smooth, broad as long, finely and regularly toothed; apex tapering.
B. Shape broadly pyramidal. (Populus nigra) BLACK PoPLAR BB. Shape narrowly pyramidal.
(P. nigra, var. Ilalica) LOMBARDY POPLAR The Abele or White Poplar (Populus alba, Linn.) is much planted about American homes, its downy-leaved and "maple leaved" varieties having the preference. The silvery velvet of the leaf linings is in sharp contrast to the dark, shining upper surfaces of the leaves. The flexible stems give the wind much freedom in the treetops, and the sunlight is reflected from the leaves much as it is on rippling water. The pale outer bark breaks in streaks and spots, showing the dark under layers, much as the palest trunks of cottonwoods do. The tree is distinctly a poplar in flowers and fruits.
Two bad habits have these silvery poplars: (r) their roots send up suckers, to the distress of owners and neighbours; (2) their leaves accumulate and hold dust and coal soot until they are filthy before the summer is half done. Moral: Plant your silver poplar in the background, where its sprouting can be controlled without damage to the lawn and where distance lends enchantment to the view of its foliage.
The Black Poplar (P. nigra, Linn.), of Europe and Asia, has become established in certain parts of the Eastern States, but it is now chiefly met with in its cultivated forms. Variety elegans is a dainty tree with small, bright, twinkling leaves and ruddy twigs and petioles. The following variety is much more extepsively known, though it has less horticultural merit.
The Lombardy Poplar (Populus nigra, var. Italica) is the exclamation point that marks by its soldierly rows so many familiar boundary lines of farms and village properties. It has the merit of infringing but slightly even by its shade on the rights and premises of others. Indeed, that such a tree should be planted for the shade it gives is scarcely probable. The pencil like form and the twinkling of the green leaves are attractive. Italian villas were punctuated with them, and any piece of planting may well be diversified and accented by a group of these trees. But they need to be flanked by trees of diffuse habit—never set alone or in rows! The great fault of these poplars is the early dying of their limbs, because of much crowding. The tree retains these dead limbs, and so loses its youthful beauty and becomes scraggy topped. As the scientific name points out, these trees are an Italian variety of the black poplar.