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34-453: A boulevard is a type of broad avenue planted with rows of trees, or in parts of North America , any urban highway or wide road in a commercial district. Boulevards were originally circumferential roads following the line of former city walls . In North American usage, boulevards may be wide, multi-lane thoroughfares divided with only a central median. The word boulevard is borrowed from French . In France, it originally meant

68-480: A clear indication of likely hybrid origin. Hybridisation continues to be common in the genus, with several hybrids between species in different sections known. There are currently 57 accepted species in the genus. Some of the most easily identifiable fossils of this genus belongs to Poplus wilmattae , which come from the Late Paleocene of North America about 58 million years ago. However, fossils from

102-408: A large plywood industry reliant upon poplar. It is graded according to sizes known as "over" (over 24 inches (610 mm)), "under" (18–24 inches (460–610 mm)), and "sokta" (less than 18 inches (460 mm)). Although the wood from Populus is known as poplar wood, a common high-quality hardwood "poplar" with a greenish colour is actually from an unrelated genus Liriodendron . Populus wood

136-628: A large straight street in a city, often created as part of a large scheme of urban planning such as Baron Haussmann 's remodelling of Paris or the L'Enfant Plan for Washington D.C.; "avenues" will typically be the main roads. This pattern is very often followed in the United States, indeed all the Americas, but in the United Kingdom this sense is less strong and the name is used more randomly, mostly for suburban streets developed in

170-421: A particularly resonant tone. Similarly, though typically it is considered to have a less attractive grain than the traditional sitka spruce , poplar is beginning to be targeted by some harp luthiers as a sustainable and even superior alternative for their sound boards : in these cases another hardwood veneer is sometimes applied to the resonant poplar base both for cosmetic reasons, and supposedly to fine-tune

204-564: A positive energy balance and a high energy efficiency . Biofuel is another option for using poplar as bioenergy supply. In the United States, scientists studied converting short rotation coppice poplar into sugars for biofuel (e.g. ethanol) production. Considering the relative cheap price, the process of making biofuel from SRC can be economically feasible, although the conversion yield from short rotation coppice (as juvenile crops) were lower than regular mature wood. Besides biochemical conversion, thermochemical conversion (e.g. fast pyrolysis)

238-828: A substantial reduction in weight. In addition to the foliage and other parts of Populus species being consumed by animals, the starchy sap layer (underneath the outer bark) is edible to humans, both raw and cooked. In Pakistan, poplar is grown on a commercial level by farmers in Punjab, Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Provinces. However, all varieties are seriously susceptible to termite attack, causing significant losses to poplar every year. Logs of poplar are therefore also used as bait in termite traps for biocontrol of termites in crops. Interest exists in using poplar as an energy crop for biomass , in energy forestry systems, particularly in light of its high energy-in to energy-out ratio, large carbon mitigation potential, and fast growth. In

272-513: Is a lighter, more porous material. Its flexibility and close grain make it suitable for a number of applications, similar to those of willow. The Greeks and Etruscans made shields of poplar, and Pliny the Elder also recommended poplar for this purpose. Poplar continued to be used for shield construction through the Middle Ages and was renowned for a durability similar to that of oak, but with

306-554: Is one of the oldest implements in the history of gardens . An Avenue of Sphinxes still leads to the tomb of the pharaoh Hatshepsut . Avenues similarly defined by guardian stone lions lead to the Ming tombs in China. British archaeologists have adopted highly specific criteria for "avenues" within the context of British archaeology . In French formal garden Baroque landscape design style, avenues of trees that were centered upon

340-417: Is very variable even on a single tree, typically with small leaves on side shoots, and very large leaves on strong-growing lead shoots. The leaves often turn bright gold to yellow before they fall during autumn. The flowers are mostly dioecious (rarely monoecious ) and appear in early spring before the leaves. They are borne in long, drooping, sessile or pedunculate catkins produced from buds formed in

374-544: The 20th century, though Western and Eastern Avenues in London are main traffic arteries out of the city, if not very straight. In cities which have a grid-based naming system , such as the borough of Manhattan in New York City , there may be a convention that the streets called avenues run parallel in one direction – roughly north–south in the case of Manhattan – while "streets" run at 90 degrees to them across

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408-511: The American antebellum era South , the southern live oak was typically used, because the trees created a beautiful shade canopy . Sometimes tree avenues were designed to direct the eye toward some distinctive architectural building or feature, such as a chapels , gazebos , or architectural follies . Avenue as a street name in French, Spanish ( avenida ) and other languages implies

442-661: The Cretaceous of this genus have been found in Tibet and Heilongjiang, China. Poplars of the cottonwood section are often wetlands or riparian trees. The aspens are among the most important boreal broadleaf trees. Poplars and aspens are important food plants for the larvae of a large number of Lepidoptera species. Pleurotus populinus , the aspen oyster mushroom, is found exclusively on dead wood of Populus trees in North America. Several species of Populus in

476-436: The United Kingdom and other parts of Europe have experienced heavy dieback ; this is thought in part to be due to Sesia apiformis which bores into the trunk of the tree during its larval stage. Many poplars are grown as ornamental trees , with numerous cultivars used. They have the advantage of growing to a very large size at a rapid pace. Almost all poplars take root readily from cuttings or where broken branches lie on

510-464: The United Kingdom, poplar (as with fellow energy crop willow) is typically grown in a short rotation coppice system for two to five years (with single or multiple stems), then harvested and burned - the yield of some varieties can be as high as 12 oven-dry tonnes per hectare every year. In warmer regions like Italy this crop can produce up to 13.8, 16.4 oven-dry tonnes of biomass per hectare every year for biannual and triennial cutting cycles also showing

544-731: The acoustic properties. Lombardy poplars are frequently used as a windbreak around agricultural fields to protect against wind erosion. Logs from the poplar provide a growing medium for shiitake mushrooms. Poplar represents a suitable candidate for phytoremediation since it has the ability to remove and store harmful pollutants in its trunk while also removing air pollution. This plant has been successfully used to target many types of pollutants including trace element (TEs) in soil and sewage sludge , Polychlorinated Biphenyl (PCBs), Trichloroethylene (TCE), Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (PAHs). Two notable poems in English lament

578-695: The avenue's propensity to draw the spectator forwards along it. In Austria-Hungary , the fashion for establishing representative avenues appeared as early as the Renaissance and reached its peak in the Baroque period. Avenues lined the access roads to chateaus and manors, as well as pilgrimage routes and Stations of the Cross. The manorial landscape architecture was followed by "folk landscaping" with wayside chapels, crosses and shrines accompanied by trees. Later, Maria Theresa decreed in 1752 to plant trees along

612-539: The avenues; roughly east–west in Manhattan. In Washington, DC the avenues radiate from the centre running diagonally across the grid of streets, which follows typical French usage of the name (in France " boulevards " are often main roads running round the city centre). In Phoenix, Arizona , "the avenues" can colloquially mean "the west side of town", due to the numbered north–south-running roads being called "Avenues" in

646-499: The axils of the leaves from the previous year. The flowers are each seated in a cup-shaped disk which is borne on the base of a scale which is itself attached to the rachis of the catkin. The scales are obovate, lobed, and fringed, membranous, hairy or smooth, and usually caducous. The male flowers are without calyx or corolla , and comprise a group of four to 60 stamens inserted on a disk; filaments are short and pale yellow; anthers are oblong, purple or red, introrse, and two-celled;

680-431: The basis of leaf and flower characters; this classification is followed below. Recent genetic studies have largely supported this, confirming some previously suspected reticulate evolution due to past hybridisation and introgression events between the groups. Some species (noted below) had differing relationships indicated by their nuclear DNA (paternally inherited) and chloroplast DNA sequences (maternally inherited),

714-634: The cells open longitudinally. The female flower also has no calyx or corolla, and comprises a single-celled ovary seated in a cup-shaped disk. The style is short, with two to four stigmata, variously lobed, and numerous ovules. Pollination is by wind, with the female catkins lengthening considerably between pollination and maturity. The fruit is a two- to four-valved dehiscent capsule , green to reddish-brown, mature in midsummer, containing numerous minute, light-brown seeds surrounded by tufts of long, soft, white hairs aiding wind dispersal. The genus Populus has traditionally been divided into six sections on

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748-461: The cutting down of poplars, William Cowper 's "The Poplar Field" and Gerard Manley Hopkins ' " Binsey Poplars felled 1879". In Billie Holiday 's " Strange Fruit ", she sings "Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze/Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees…". The Odd Poplars Alley, in Iași , Romania, is one of the spots where Mihai Eminescu sought inspiration in his works (the poem "Down Where

782-580: The dwelling radiated across the landscape. See the avenues in the Gardens of Versailles or Het Loo . Other late 17th-century French and Dutch landscapes, in that intensely ordered and flat terrain, fell naturally into avenues; Meindert Hobbema , in The Avenue at Middelharnis (1689) presents such an avenue in farming country, neatly flanked at regular intervals by rows of young trees that have been rigorously limbed up; his central vanishing point mimics

816-725: The flat surface of a rampart , and later a promenade taking the place of a demolished fortification. It is a borrowing from the Dutch word bolwerk ' bulwark '. Boulevards in Copenhagen : Avenue (landscape) The French term allée is used for avenues planted in parks and landscape gardens, as well as boulevards such as the Grande Allée in Quebec City , Canada, and Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin . The avenue

850-469: The ground (they also often have remarkable suckering abilities, and can form huge colonies from a single original tree, such as the famous Pando forest made of thousands of Populus tremuloides clones). Trees with fastigiate (erect, columnar) branching are particularly popular, and are widely grown across Europe and southwest Asia. However, like willows , poplars have very vigorous and invasive root systems stretching up to 40 metres (130 ft) from

884-420: The middle of the 19th century, when the construction of imperial roads continued, but at the same time a network of non-state side roads was created, the law ordered the planting of avenues along them, especially fruit trees and mulberries. Many baroque alleys have aged and been felled, and fruit tree alleys have become increasingly popular. At the time of the development of motoring, the oldest avenues often hinder

918-442: The new imperial roads for economic, aesthetic, orientation and safety reasons. Most avenues were created during the reigns of Maria Theresa and Joseph II. At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, new landscaping came from England, and formal aesthetics were replaced by the aesthetics of the natural landscape. During Napoleonic wars, pyramidal poplars became a new element, popular due to their fast growth and distinctive shape. Also in

952-403: The related willows ) the terminal bud present. The leaves are spirally arranged, and vary in shape from triangular to circular or (rarely) lobed, and with a long petiole ; in species in the sections Populus and Aigeiros , the petioles are laterally flattened, so that breezes easily cause the leaves to wobble back and forth, giving the whole tree a "twinkling" appearance in a breeze. Leaf size

986-648: The street's size, importance, or function. Avenues were usually lined with trees when first built, although many avenues have lost their trees to make way for overhead wiring, parking or to allow light into properties. Populus See text Populus is a genus of 25–30 species of deciduous flowering plants in the family Salicaceae , native to most of the Northern Hemisphere . English names variously applied to different species include poplar ( / ˈ p ɒ p l ər / ), aspen , and cottonwood . The western balsam poplar ( P. trichocarpa )

1020-817: The trees; planting close to houses or ceramic water pipes may result in damaged foundations and cracked walls and pipes due to their search for moisture. A simple, reproducible, high-frequency micropropagation protocol in eastern cottonwood Populus deltoides has been reported by Yadav et al. 2009. In India, the poplar is grown commercially by farmers, mainly in the Punjab region. Common poplar varieties are: The trees are grown from kalam or cuttings, harvested annually in January and February, and commercially available up to 15   November. Poplars are most commonly used to make plywood : Yamuna Nagar in Haryana state has

1054-830: The western part of the city, separated from the eastern "Streets" by a "Central Avenue". Similarly, "the avenues" in San Francisco, California refers to the Richmond District and the Sunset District , the two neighborhoods on the Pacific coast, north and south of Golden Gate Park , respectively. In Anglophone urban or suburban settings, "avenue" is one of the usual suite of words used in street names, along with "boulevard", "circle", "court", "drive", "lane", "place", "road", "street", "terrace", "way", "gate" and so on, any of which may carry connotations as to

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1088-448: The widening and modernization of rural roads and are the subject of dispute between conservationists and traffic safety requirements. To enhance the approach to mansions or manor houses , avenues were planted along the entrance drive. Sometimes the avenues are in double rows on each side of a road. Trees preferred for avenues were selected for their height and speed of growth, such as poplar , beech , lime , and horse chestnut . In

1122-599: Was also studied for making biofuel from short rotation coppice poplar and was found to have higher energy recovery than that from bioconversion. Poplar was the most common wood used in Italy for panel paintings ; the Mona Lisa and most famous early Italian Renaissance paintings are on poplar. The wood is generally white, often with a slightly yellowish colour. Some stringed instruments are made with one-piece poplar backs; violas made in this fashion are said to have

1156-486: Was the first tree to have its full DNA code determined by DNA sequencing , in 2006. The genus has a large genetic diversity, and can grow from 15–50 m (49–164 ft) tall, with trunks up to 2.5 m (8 ft) in diameter. The bark on young trees is smooth and white to greenish or dark gray, and often has conspicuous lenticels ; on old trees, it remains smooth in some species, but becomes rough and deeply fissured in others. The shoots are stout, with (unlike in

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