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Fremont Cottonwood, Populus fremontii, San Diego, Californiamo

2,982 views · Published 13 September 2012 · 3:35 · Indexed 27 September 2026

Channel: Melvin Wei · 2012 · Science & Technology

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Populus fremontii, known colloquially as the Fremont cottonwood or the Alamo cottonwood, is a large deciduous tree with leaves that appear as hanging spades from a distance, but are actually smoothly serrated when you view the leaves up close. It grows in riparian zones and well-watered alluvial bottomlands (loose sediment soil that drains water into local depressions) up to 600 meters in elevation. The tree has a large crown and grows up to 35 meters in height, making it a very large tree if the conditions are right. Its fruits are wind-dispered achenes (think dandelion seeds) that look like patches of cotton, hence the name of the tree.

Native Americans used this tree for baskets, tools, musical instruments, and as a source of vitamin C (the inner bark could be chewed) to prevent scurvy, a disease that resulted in problems synthesized collagen.

I saw innumerate Fremont cottonwoods, a mixture of saplings and mature trees, colonizing the riparian zone downstream of the larger-leafed California sycamores; it seems like the Fremont cottonwood needs lots of water to grow, but unlike sycamores, can thrive in places where the creeks/streams dry out from time to time.

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