South Dakota Tree-Following—Plains Cottonwood

"A circle of cottonwood-leaf toy tipis made by Indian children of Plains tribes ... These they made in numbers and placed them in circles like the camp circle of their tribe." (Gilmore 1919)

Last month I launched a project to get to know the trees of South Dakota, starting with Black Hills Spruce, the state tree. This month I chose Plains Cottonwood, which was a strong state-tree competitor and rightfully so. Plains Indians relied on it for construction materials, fuel for heat, and winter food for horses. Fur traders built stockades and boats from cottonwood trunks. And as early travelers slowly made their way across the prairies, the occasional tree offered a welcome bit of shade. That hasn't changed.

Plains Cottonwood, western South Dakota. I ate lunch in its shade every day during a grassland project.

While looking for information, I came across a thought-provoking article: "Cottonwood Houses, Cottonwood Stars" (2014). Much of it is included here. Sometimes a look back shows what has happened since. Sometimes we can undo a bit of that.

In the early 1900s, ethnobotanist Melvin Gilmore visited with elderly Indians of the Great Plains, specifically those who had gathered native plants and still knew the old names and uses. He hoped to record this knowledge "while it may still be obtained, before the death of all the old people who alone possess it.” As it turned out, those old people were eager to share so that “future generations of their own people as well as the white people may know and understand their manner of life."

Gilbert observed and described construction of toy tipis from the broad deltoid leaves of Plains Cottonwood, Populus deltoides ssp. occidentalis. Ten years ago, I carefully followed his instructions:

"They split a leaf a short distance down from the tip along the midrib; at equal distances from the tip they tore across from the margin slightly; then, bending back the margin above the rents for the smoke flaps, and drawing together the leaf-margins below the rents and fastening them with a splinter or a thorn, they had a toy tipi."

Smoke flaps regulate draft and ventilate the tipi, especially smoke from the fire.

My camp circle.

Another gift of the Cottonwood are the stars concealed in its twigs. Kathleen Cain learned this as a child in rural Nebraska, from her father.

"You have to find [a twig] with a sturdy knuckle ... You have to cut cleanly ... One cut is best ... He turned the twig so I could gaze directly into its center. Running crosswise through the middle of the small piece of wood, the cut revealed a reddish-brown and nearly perfect five-pointed star." (Cain 2007)

A sturdy knuckle—the joint between two years’ growth. If you want to look for a cottonwood star, other species will work also. This is P. acuminata.

This cottonwood star is 6 mm across.

As I learned from my cottonwood projects, being a child again is therapeutic. As if to drive the point home, this showed up in The New York Times today:

"If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength." Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

Sources

Cain, K. 2007. The cottonwood tree; an American champion. Boulder, CO: Johnson Books.

Cottonwood Houses, Cottonwood Stars. November 2014.

Gilmore, MR. 1919. Use of plants by the Indians of the Missouri River region. Bureau of American Ethnology.

Johnson, W. Carter, and Knight, Dennis H. 2022. Ecology of Dakota Landscapes; past, present, and future. Yale University Press (in print and ebook format).

This is my report for the February gathering of tree followers, kindly hosted by The Squirrelbasket. If you'd like to join us, you can learn more here.

Am I following a cottonwood of the bitter kind?

The Laramie River is lined with the wrong kind of cottonwood, including mine (left).

... we arrived on the 10th March at a small branch of the North fork of the Platte, where we found an abundance of wood.  This stream is about one hundred feet wide, meandering north-eastwardly through a beautiful and fertile valley ...  It’s margin is partially wooded with large cottonwood of the bitter kind.  The sweet cottonwood ... is nowhere to be found    William Henry Ashley, 1825 (Dale 1918)

Cottonwoods were an important winter fuel in the American West in the 1800s, not just for heat but also to fuel the main mode of transport – the horse.  When grass was poor or covered in snow, the inhabitants – Indians, explorers, trappers and early settlers – collected young branches and inner bark to feed their horses.

Young cottonwood branches and upper branches of older trees were provided as forage for their [Teton Dakota] horses and were said to be as “good for them as oats.”  White trappers and travelers have recorded their observations as to the value of the cottonwood as forage.  (Gilmore 1919)

When the round leaf or sweet-bark cottonwood can be had abundantly, horses may be wintered with but little inconvenience.  They are very fond of this bark, and, judging by the effect produced from feeding it to my horses last winter, I suppose it almost, if not quite, as nutricious as timothy hay.   William Henry Ashley, 1825 (Dale 1918)

Horses survived and even thrived on sweet cottonwood at lower elevations, but they wouldn’t eat the bitter cottonwood of higher valleys and mountains.  In winter a horse would starve in these places.

No sweet cottonwoods anywhere.

Fur trader William Ashley and a small band of trappers camped for several days in the Laramie Valley in March of 1825, while exploring a “central route” to the Pacific.  They had been in the region long enough to know the cottonwoods.  They recognized those along the river as “of the bitter kind” while "The sweet cottonwood, such as affords food for horses, is nowhere to be found" (Dale 1918).

Not all trappers were as savvy.  In the fall of 1831, a party led by Captain AK Stephens chose the Laramie Valley for their winter camp.  Game was abundant, and the river was lined with cottonwoods.  But they didn’t notice that these were the wrong kind until the snows came; then it was too late to move.  They survived, as there was plenty of game and firewood, but their horses didn’t.

My cottonwood tree shortly after new-years day, 2015.

On new-years day, notwithstanding our horses were nearly all dead, as being fully satisfied that the few that were yet living must die soon, we concluded to have a feast in our best style; for which purpose we made preparation by sending out four of our best hunters, to get a choice piece of meat for the occasion. These men killed ten Buffaloe, from which they selected one of the fattest humps they could find and brought in, and after roasting it handsomely before the fire, we all seated ourselves upon the ground, encircling, what we there called a splendid repast to dine upon. Feasting sumptuously, cracking a few jokes, taking a few rounds with our rifles, and wishing heartily for some liquor, having none at that place we spent the day.  Zenas Leonard, 1832 (Leonard 1904)

WY Game & Fish also mistakenly assumed that cottonwoods along the Laramie River were of the sweet kind.

Today we call the sweet cottonwood “Plains cottonwood” or Populus deltoides ssp. monilifera.  The bitter one is the narrowleaf cottonwood, P. angustifolia.  Historians have assumed that early travelers such as Ashley found narrowleafs along the Laramie River (e.g. Dale 1918).  However the cottonwoods I’ve found there appear to be the lanceleaf cottonwood, Populus x acuminata, a widespread natural hybrid between the Plains and narrowleaf cottonwoods.

Below are leaves from the three cottonwoods.  From top to bottom: sweet Plains cottonwood (source), bitter narrowleaf cottonwood (source), and a cottonwood from the Laramie River – probably the hybrid lanceleaf, with broader blades and longer petioles.

When a bitter narrowleaf cottonwood crosses with a sweet Plains cottonwood, what's the result ... bitter or sweet?

Maybe I'll recruit friends to taste the inner bark of the three cottonwoods.  We could do blindfold taste tests ... how scientific!  But will I find any such intrepid companions?

Was it lanceleaf cottonwoods that the trappers camped in, finding them as bitter and unpalatable as the narrowleaf “parent”?  Or did they camp among narrowleafs – the true bitter cottonwoods?  To answer this, we need to know where specifically narrowleaf and lanceleaf (hybrid) cottonwoods grow in the Laramie Valley and vicinity.

I thought this would be easy to figure out.  In Laramie we’re lucky to have the Rocky Mountain Herbarium, at the University of Wyoming.  It's the largest herbarium between St. Louis and those on the West Coast, and the largest anywhere for Rocky Mountain plants.  The local area is generally well-represented, yet when I looked for lanceleaf cottonwood specimens from the Laramie Valley, I found only four ... and none from the river.  Most were collected on the university campus.  There was one specimen of narrowleaf cottonwood from the river, upstream in the mountains to the west.

This summer when mature leaves are available, I’ll collect a specimen from my cottonwood and add it to the Rocky Mountain Herbarium, thereby immortalizing the tree!  Hopefully I can decide what this cottonwood would best be called.  Is it sufficiently different from the narrowleaf to be called a lanceleaf?  With back-crossing, every variation is possible.  If time permits, I’ll visit other places along the river to see which cottonwoods grow where.  There's so much to learn ...

The distant cottonwood (center) is the tree I’m following.

Was my tree alive when Ashley traveled along the Laramie River in 1825?  Did Stephens and his trappers spend the winter near it in 1832?  If so, it would have been a young sapling or sucker shoots.  Cottonwoods grow fast and generally die young, only occasionally reaching 100 years of age or more (Weir 2014).

☞I’m grateful to Steve Sutter, Cultural Records Specialist with the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office, for introducing me to the role of cottonwoods in early exploration of the American West.  A simple question – "what kind of cottonwood grows along the river?" – and the discussions that followed made this post possible.

Sources

Cain, K.  2007.  The cottonwood tree; an American champion.  Boulder, CO:  Johnson Books.

Dale, HC, ed.  1918.  The Ashley-Smith explorations and the discovery of a central route to the Pacific 1822-1829.  Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Co.  Available at Google books.

Gilmore, MR.  1919.  Use of plants by the Indians of the Missouri River region.  Bureau of American Ethnology.

Leonard, Z (Wagner, WF, ed).  1904.  Leonard's narrative, adventure of Zenas Leonard, fur trader and trapper, 1831-1836.  Cleveland: The Burrows Brothers Company.  Available at Google books.

Thybony, S.  1981.  The enthnohistory and prehistory of the Medicine Bow National Forest in Eckles, J ed.  Cultural resource overview; Medicine Bow National Forest including the Thunder Basin National Grassland.

Weir, SK.  2014.  Plains cottonwood (PDF).  Accessed January 5, 2015.

Join the fun ... follow a tree!  Kindly hosted by Lucy Corrander.

Cottonwood Houses, Cottonwood Stars

Many years ago, in the heat of summer, little girls sat in the shade of cottonwood trees and made tipis from the leaves.

These they made in numbers and placed them in circles like the camp circle of their tribe.

“A circle of cottonwood-leaf toy tipis made by Indian children of Plains tribes” (Gilmore 1919).

I myself have spent a lot of time among cottonwoods as I’m following one this year – a lanceleaf cottonwood.  I’ve been keeping an eye out for stories.  I've found plenty, but none obviously about the lanceleaf.  It's definitely not the cottonwood of the toy tipi story.  The leaves are too narrow, and their bases are tapered.

Lanceleaf cottonwood, Populus x acuminata.

Most cottonwood stories probably refer to the Plains cottonwood, Populus deltoides ssp. monilifera.  It’s common in much of the American West, and was important to indigenous people, early travelers, and settlers – for shade, fuel and building materials.

A Plains cottonwood.  I ate lunch in its shade every day during a grassland project.

It was the Plains cottonwood – Wága chaⁿ of the Dakota – that supplied leaves for toy tipis.  In early October, I collected leaves from the Plains cottonwood in my yard, and spines from the matrimony vine (Lycium barbarum) to make my own, following the story carefully.

Building materials.

They split a leaf a short distance down from the tip along the midrib; at equal distances from the tip they tore across from the margin slightly; then, bending back the margin above the rents for the smoke flaps, and drawing together the leaf-margins below the rents and fastening them with a splinter or a thorn, they had a toy tipi.

Smoke flaps regulate draft and ventilate the tipi, especially smoke from the fire.

These [I] made in numbers and placed them in circles like the camp circle of [a] tribe.

The toy tipi story comes from ethnobotanist Melvin Gilmore (1919).  In the early 1900s he visited elderly Indians of the Great Plains who had gathered native plants and still knew the old names and uses.  He hoped to document this knowledge "while it may still be obtained, before the death of all the old people who alone possess it.”  They were happy to share the knowledge “in order that, as they said, future generations of their own people as well as the white people may know and understand their manner of life."

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Lanceleaf cottonwoods may not be good for leaf tipis, but like all cottonwoods, they do have stars inside.  The story of the cottonwood star comes from rural Nebraska, by way of Kathleen Cain (2007).  Her father once asked her “Have you ever seen the cottonwood star?”  She hadn’t.

He turned the twig so I could gaze directly into its center.  Running crosswise through the middle of the small piece of wood, the cut revealed a reddish-brown and nearly perfect five-pointed star.

You have to find one with a sturdy knuckle ... You have to cut cleanly ... No hacking.  Not jagged.  One cut is best.

A Pex tube cutter worked well.

A sturdy knuckle.

I selected a twig with a sturdy knuckle – the joint between two years’ growth – and cut through it easily and cleanly.  I saw a tiny reddish-brown spot, the pith where nutrients are stored and transported.  Then I looked through a 10x hand lens.  It was indeed a star!

A macro lens revealed the cottonwood star nicely.  It’s only 6 mm across.

The path of the hidden star stretches out into the future of every cottonwood branch.

Sources

Cain, K.  2007.  The cottonwood tree; an American champion.  Boulder, CO:  Johnson Books.

Gilmore, M.R.  1919.  Use of plants by the Indians of the Missouri River region.  Bureau of American Ethnology.

This post is part of this month's gathering of tree-followers kindly hosted by Lucy.