Alternate name: Tulip Tree

Family: Magnoliaceae, Magnolia view all from this family

Description One of the tallest and most beautiful eastern hardwoods, with a long, straight trunk, a narrow crown that spreads with age, and large showy flowers resembling tulips or lilies.
Height: 80-120' (24-37 m).
Diameter: 2-3' (0.6-0.9 m), sometimes much larger.
Leaves: 3-6" (7.5-15 cm) long and wide. Blades of unusual shape, with broad tip and base nearly straight like a square, and with 4 or sometimes 6 short-pointed paired lobes; hairless; long-stalked. Shiny dark green above, paler beneath; turning yellow in autumn.
Bark: dark gray; becoming thick and deeply furrowed.
Twigs: brown, stout, hairless, with ring scars at nodes.
Flowers: 1 1/2-2" (4-5 cm) long and wide; cup-shaped, with 6 rounded green petals (orange at base); solitary and upright at end of leafy twig; in spring.
Fruit: 2 1/2-3" (6-7.5 cm) long; conelike; light brown; composed of many overlapping 1- or 2-seeded nutlets 1-1 1/2" (2.5-4 cm) long (including narrow wing); shedding from upright axis in autumn; the axis persistent in winter.

Habitat Moist well-drained soils, especially valleys and slopes; often in pure stands.

Range Extreme S. Ontario east to Vermont and Rhode Island, south to N. Florida, west to Louisiana, and north to S. Michigan; to 1000' (305 m) in north and to 4500' (1372 m) in southern Appalachians.

Discussion Introduced into Europe from Virginia by the earliest colonists and grown also on the Pacific Coast. Very tall trees with massive trunks existed in the primeval forests but were cut for the valuable soft wood. Pioneers hollowed out a single log to make a long, lightweight canoe. One of the chief commercial hardwoods, Yellow Poplar is used for furniture, as well as for crates, toys, musical instruments, and pulpwood.