cottonwood

See also: Cottonwood

English

Etymology

From cotton +‎ wood.

Pronunciation

  • Audio (Southern England):(file)

Noun

cottonwood (plural cottonwoods)

  1. A tree from one of number of species of tree in the genus Populus (poplars), typically growing along watercourses, with fluffy catkins.
    • 1895, J[ohn] W[esley] Powell, chapter I, in Canyons of the Colorado, Meadville, PA: Flood & Vincent; republished as The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons, New York: Dover, 1961, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 20:
      Between these canyons the river has a low but rather narrow flood plain, with cottonwood groves scattered here and there, and a chaparral of mesquite bearing beans and thorns.
    • 1912 January, Zane Grey, chapter 8, in Riders of the Purple Sage […], New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, →OCLC:
      […] and through the middle of this forest, from wall to wall, ran a winding line of brilliant green which marked the course of cottonwoods and willows.
    • 2021, Peter Cavanagh, “9. Cranes”, in 100 Flying Birds: Photographing the Mechanics of Flight, →ISBN, page 218:
      The leaves of a small bush echoed the yellow cottonwoods that are so characteristic of the Rio Grande Valley in late fall.
  2. Populus sect. Aigeiros, a taxonomic section of the poplar genus
  3. A cottonwood hibiscus (Talipariti tiliaceum, syn. Hibiscus tiliaceus), a flowering shrub or tree in the mallow family.
  4. A tree of species Ceiba pentandra, native to the American tropics and west Africa; silk-cotton tree.
    • 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
      There is no break in the trees. That is the wonder and the mystery of it. There where you see light-green rushes instead of dark-green undergrowth, there between the great cotton woods, that is my private gate into the unknown.
  5. Several species of trees endemic to New Zealand.

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