Poplar's relative is aspen

Nearest relative of the poplar - aspen. The name aspen in Latin means “trembling poplar.” Aspen and poplar have a lot in common.

Plants that have similarities in structure are considered related flowers and fruits. A relative of the poplar - aspen - has the same small, inconspicuous flowers, collected in dense earrings and hanging from the branches of the tree during flowering.

Fruit poplar and aspen too very similar - long oval boxes, small, the size of a grain of wheat. When ripe, the capsule disintegrates, releasing the seeds inside. Spilling out of the capsule, the seed with many tiny hairs flies through the air for a long time, like white fluff. Poplar fluff is present in abundance in our cities.

Aspen is a tree of low value, not even suitable for firewood. The trunk has rot inside already at an early age; adult trees are almost all rotten in the middle. Aspen wood is used mainly for making matches and wood chips, which in some areas are used to cover roofs.

In the southern regions, aspen shoots cause some damage to forestry. After a valuable oak forest is cut down, aspen quickly takes over the area free from planting and no longer allows oak there. Therefore, aspen in forestry is sometimes considered a real weed, which is very difficult to control. After all, cutting down an adult tree gives impetus to a mass of new root shoots, gradually occupying an increasingly larger area.

True, there is a way to fight, but it is very labor-intensive.From an adult aspen, you need to cut off a wide ring of bark along the entire circumference of the trunk down to the wood itself. As a result, the paths along which nutrition travels from leaves to roots are blocked. Without receiving the substances necessary for life, the roots weaken, gradually dying. All root shoots die along with the tree.