White is the new black

At last, a chance to find a specimen from another Populus group other than the black poplars I've been trying to get to grips with over the last few days. An early evening visit to Tonbridge Sports ground at Swanmead to give Monty his walk, turned up a line of five black poplars of a kind I don't think I've seen before, but also a couple of trees of the "Abele", or white poplar, Populus alba L., in amongst a sort of collection of less usual trees/shrubs on raised rougher ground in the middle of the various pitches. These are the first ones I've seen (consciously) for quite a few years, indicating the little notice I've taken of trees in the past!

Its a beautiful tree, quite rounded in its canopy outline but with whitish trunks above the roughened and darkened lower bole, the white areas of the trunks fairly well peppered with lines of black diamonds surrounding the vertical lenticels, and with furry white hairs completely covering the shoots, buds and undersurface of the leaves of the current growth, with some white remnants of the fur on the top surfaces of the leaves as well. The underside of the new leaves is SO soft - like Monty's ears, only possibly even softer!!! The whole impression is completely un-black poplar like, and quite a surprise. The bilateral flattening of petioles is only clear on previous year's leaves, and can't be said to be at all obvious on the soft lax petioles of what I think are this year's leaves, if the growth rings can be relied upon. The tree is said by Mitchell to lean, and to have its greatest canopy width nearest the top, but neither of these features was clear in these specimens. I did see suckers, regarded as commonly formed, particularly commonly on sandy soils (Mitchell).

On this tree the leaf blades appear to be about 5 cm long and wide, rounded, with almost aspen-like teeth on the leaves well under the main canopy, the ones that I can easily reach, or sometimes more-or-less five-lobed. Small arrow-head stipules, buds not well developed yet,  in August. If Mitchell is right about the dimensions, the small size of the leaves helps to confirm this tree as P. alba, as opposed to P. x canescens, the hybrid with P. tremula, the aspen.



The white poplar was introduced into England from Central and Southern Europe or Asia at an early but unknown date. The trees should have a yellow autumn colour (there is a cv. Richardii, which is generally yellow throughout year). I'll plan to return in autumn to see this colour, and again in spring to examine the catkins and find out whether this is a male or female tree - male trees are very rare according to BSBI.

The tree suckers well in some situations in Britain and Europe, and this is a potential nuisance in gardens, but an advantage in coastal areas (it is salt resistant) where it is sometimes used to help stabilise shifting dunes. The tree has also been introduced into America since 1748, where it is said to be a bit of an invasive problem due to its suckers and it has actually been banned in Connecticut. Luckily it does not seed heavily there (there are few males) and this limits its overall invasive potential.

Its said to be a tree that tends to lean, and this can be seen in these rather less beautiful specimens a little bit further over in the sports ground, which show rather less white, and seem to have grown very little this year. I still think they are P. alba, and not P. x canescens.

There is also a pyrimidal form (pyrimidalis according to Mitchell, syn Bolleana), known as Bolle's poplar syn pyrimidalis according to the Collins guide, which is a selection from wild trees in Turkmenistan, and found in some collections.

The Abele tree is dedicated to Hercules in memory of his victory over the monster Cacus (the site of the conflict was the Aventine hill, one of the 7 hills where Rome was built, said to be covered with white poplars at the time) and garlands of white poplar were traditionally used as victory wreaths.

These are the lenticals forming on a young shoot, soon to be surrounded by black diamonds of raised bark on older trunks. Visible from the ground as lines or necklaces of black diamond shapes on the light grey bark high in the tree above the black roughened boles, they are distinctive features of the tree.