cottonwood

See also: Cottonwood

English

From cotton +‎ wood.

cottonwood (plural cottonwoods)

A tree from one of number of species of tree in the genus Populus (poplars), typically growing along watercourses, with fluffy catkins.
- 1895, J[ohn] W[esley] Powell, chapter I, in Canyons of the Colorado, Meadville, PA: Flood & Vincent; republished as The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons, New York: Dover, 1961, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 20:
  Between these canyons the river has a low but rather narrow flood plain, with cottonwood groves scattered here and there, and a chaparral of mesquite bearing beans and thorns.
- 1912 January, Zane Grey, chapter 8, in Riders of the Purple Sage , New York, N.Y., London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, →OCLC:
  […] and through the middle of this forest, from wall to wall, ran a winding line of brilliant green which marked the course of cottonwoods and willows.
Populus sect. Aigeiros, a taxonomic section of the poplar genus
A cottonwood hibiscus (Talipariti tiliaceum, syn. Hibiscus tiliaceus), a flowering shrub or tree in the mallow family.
A tree of species Ceiba pentandra, native to the American tropics and west Africa; silk-cotton tree.
- 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World , London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
  There is no break in the trees. That is the wonder and the mystery of it. There where you see light-green rushes instead of dark-green undergrowth, there between the great cotton woods, that is my private gate into the unknown.

tree from Populus with fluffy catkins

Hibiscus tiliaceus