cottonwood

cotton +‎ wood

cottonwood (plural cottonwoods)

1. A tree from one of number of species of tree in the genus Populus (poplars), typically growing along watercourses, with fluffy catkins.
   • 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.

2. Populus sect. Aigeiros, a taxonomic section of the poplar genus
3. A flowering shrub or tree, the cottonwood hibiscus (Talipariti tiliaceum, syn. Hibiscus tiliaceus), in the mallow family.
4. A tree, 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.

• swamp cottonwood

• cottonwood on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Populus on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• Populus sect. Aigeiros on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• Talipariti tiliaceum on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• cottonwood at USDA Plants database