Black Poplar

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Black poplar is Britain’s rarest native commercial timber tree. There are many rarer native tree species in Britain, but they’re not generally used for timber production like this is, or rather this ‘was’. The wood of Black poplar is light-weight, resilient, and naturally fire-resistant. The timber is also shock absorbent and was the timber of choice for cart & wagon planks, farm equipment, match sticks, stable partitions and clogs. More importantly the fire-resistant properties meant that the wood was ideal for use as break-pads for carts and steam locomotives. As you can imagine the wood has gone out of favour today.

The British Black poplar (Populus nigra subsp. betulifolia) is a pioneer species of riparian ecosystems. The main distinguishing feature is the presence of hairy petioles on the young expanding leaves. It would have originally been a species of flood-plain delta systems, which of-course Britain no-longer has, as this habitat has for centuries been turned over into prime agricultural land. The species was once a common sight across southern Britain. The drainage and management of waterways since the 17th century means that the specific substrate requirements for seed germination have, in the main, been lost in Great Britain. However, it is important to note that Black poplar also reproduces readily by vegetative means, both naturally, for instance when detached branches are carried downstream in flooded rivers, and also through human-mediated planting of rooted cuttings.

In addition to the wide-scale loss of suitable germination sites, a further threat to British Black poplar arrived in the 19th century with the introduction of the American Black poplar (P. deltoides) and the hybrids derived from that, also the Lombardy Black poplar, (P. nigra var. italica), which has also been widely planted in Great Britain due to its visually striking upright habit. All these have often been planted in preference to native Black poplar because of their superior growth rates. The presence of these hybrids in the landscape potentially confounds conservation efforts for native poplars. A third reason for the decline of the native Black poplar in Britain is that male clones were preferred because female trees produced large amounts of white seed fluff, which was considered unsightly and undesirable. Consequently, this has led to a situation where the sex ratio of the surviving trees in the landscape is heavily male-biased. Milne-Redhead conducted surveys in 1990 and concluded there were approximately 7000 surviving native Black poplar trees in Britain, and of those only about 600 are female.