_Populus candicans_ Ait., the Balm of Gilead of which only the pistillate tree is known, has often been considered a variety of the North American Balsam Poplar. This tree has been long cultivated in the northeastern part of the country and has sometimes escaped from cultivation and formed groves of considerable extent, as on the banks of Cullasagee Creek on the western slope of the Blue Ridge in Macon County, North Carolina. The fact that only one sex is known suggests hybrid origin but of obscure and possibly partly of foreign origin.
5. Populus trichocarpa Hook. Black Cottonwood. Balsam Cottonwood.
Leaves broad-ovate, acute or acuminate at apex, rounded or abruptly cuneate at base, finely crenately serrate, glabrous, dark green above, pale and rusty or silvery white and conspicuously reticulate-venulose below, 3′—4′ long, 2′—2½′ wide; petioles slender, pubescent, puberulous, pilose or rarely glabrous, 1½′—2′ in length. Flowers: aments stalked, villose-pubescent, the staminate densely flowered, 1½′—2′ long, ⅓′ thick, the pistillate loosely flowered, 2½′—3′ long, becoming 4′—5′ long before the fruit ripens; scales dilated at the apex, irregularly cut into numerous filiform lobes, glabrous or slightly puberulous on the outer surface; disk of the staminate flower broad, slightly oblique; stamens 40—60, with slender elongated filaments longer than the large light purple anthers; disk of the pistillate flower deep cup-shaped, with irregularly crenate or nearly entire revolute margins; ovary subglobose, coated with thick hoary tomentum, with 3 nearly sessile broadly dilated deeply lobed stigmas. Fruit subglobose, nearly sessile, pubescent, thick-walled, 3-valved; seeds obovoid, apiculate at the gradually narrowed apex, light brown, puberulous toward the ends, 1/12′ long.
A tree, 30°—100° high, with a trunk 1°—3° in diameter, erect branches forming an open head, and slender branchlets terete or slightly angled while young, marked by many orange-colored lenticels, glabrous or when they first appear coated with deciduous rufous or pale pubescence, reddish brown during their first year, gradually becoming dark gray, and roughened by the greatly enlarged and thickened elevated leaf-scars. Winter-buds resinous, fragrant, ovoid, long-pointed, frequently curved above the middle, ¾′ long and ¼′ thick, with 6 or 7 light orange-brown slightly puberulous scales scarious on the margins. Bark ½′—2½′ thick, ashy gray, deeply divided into broad rounded ridges broken on the surface into thick closely appressed scales. Wood light, dull brown, with thin nearly white sapwood.