White Poplar, Silver-leaved Poplar, Silver Poplar

This European plant is a pretty, large tree with mostly cream-white bark and silvery foliage. However, it easily suckers to form a colony...Read More and it has escaped cultivation in northern Illinois in various spots to become invasive. There is a wild colony in Philadelphia, PA, near the railroad tracks. It is messy and weak-wooded, so it is not good for the residential landscape. It can be used in parks and large commercial properties.

We love our white poplars! We live amongst a grove of them and we are trying to figure out how to transplant the suckers to other places ...Read Moreon our property. They are so magnificent in the wind, both in their sound and appearance! We could not possibly love them more!

We live in the desert southeast of Utah, and there are very few trees that will grow on their own here. Russian olive is another that volunteers itself to the landscape readily. I also love it, and respect its nasty thorns! I love how these trees grow and thrive, despite the desert landscape they find themselves in. Their message is one of survival, and it speaks volumes to me.

Incidentally, we are planning to build a treehouse/guest house in a small stand of our silver poplars soon. They appear to be about 10 years old, with plenty of life in them yet. The house will be self-supported, so as to not put strain on the trees themselves.

We love our wild trees!

Connecticut has banned the trade, transport, or planting of this species due to its invasiveness. It's a threat to natural areas and a sp...Read Moreecies of concern to organizations dealing with the environment over most of North America.

There is not many here in the Twin Cities - one interesting observation I have notice is that they either mostly or all are found only in...Read More certain surburbs that are build at a certain time - about 1970 to maybe early 1980 and that this tree may be planted by the builder or come from certain local nurseries? After that, no more trees were planted - one obvious reason is their short liveness - the trees are starting to die out around here at about the age of 20 to 30 - rather short for a big tree species - even cottonwood live longer than that.

They can be mistook by the average non gardening people for birch species as they have mostly white bark that look like paper birch but have very rough dark brown, nearly black bark at the base of the tree.

Alan Mitchell, the author of Trees of North America said that Gray Poplar, a hybrid between this tree and european aspen is easily mistook for this species and is much more common from South Carolina to Arkansas and in certain areas in the the West - mainly Colorado to Montana. He also says that Gray Poplar is much more vigorous than White Poplar.

I have never seen White Poplar seed itself in the wild and one website admit that seed germinate rate is low in North America and its suckers are more like any other relative of the cottonwood family - shade hater - any silver tree I see in the wild tend to be Russian Olive in Minnesota so from the authorities, White Poplar when it escapes tend to be woodland edge or open areas when they escape to the wild.

MissFablous, next time use more specific information instead of being vague - clearly you don't do enough research on White Poplar. It is banned in Conn as potential invasive and two other authorities, one in Wisc and another for the general South East US recommends the same.

To me, White Poplar is more like localized invasive - when they are planted too close to wild areas they can get out of hand and colonize areas where sun are plentiful but they are heavily dependent on root suckering (also called vegetative propagation) and thus restricted only to that particular patch of wild area. Russian Olive is more aggressive by compare to White Poplar but less so than Buckthorn and Tatarian Honeysucker which is transplanted by birds and carried far from the orginial parent tree.

I won't suggest this tree for Eastern US planting - too short life span - there's better alternatives like Amur Cherry, White bark pine, monarch birch, aspen (If you are willing to control their suckering habits - same as White Poplar) and many others thought it is hard to think of a native white bark tree other than the birch and aspen family which is also short living too (the two white birch species tend to average about 15 years from my observations but I have seen those that might are 30 years old or longer but they are in small numbers) and if you really want white poplar you have to be responsible for it - give it a bit of attention every year and use preventive methods like mowing, burning to make sure it doesn't spread.

For the drier Great Plains, - I would prefer using the native Black Cottonwood as a priority planting but sadly there are not much other native trees that are cheap or such drought tolerance (Burr oak may be a suggestion but they are so hard to transplant due to their long taproot that resent disturbation thus their rarity) so plant white poplar with some degree of caution.