Tulip Poplar: The Beautiful, Fast Growing, Popular Maryland Tree

Lou Meyer, reginal business developer in Davey's Mid-Atlantic region, talks about the beautiful tulip poplar tree, including its height, classification and uses for its wood. 

In this episode we cover: 

• Description of the tulip poplar (00:42)
• Where and how do they grow? (2:18)
• Weak wood vs. mid wood trees (5:02)
• Colonizer trees (6:03)
• Tulip poplar leaves (7:43)
• Tulip poplar flowers (8:52)
• Tulip poplar fruit (9:57)
• They grow to extremely tall heights (10:24)
• How are trees like these measured? (12:03)
• How do climbers face their fear of heights? (14:28)
• Uses for the tulip poplar's wood (16:34)
• Tulip poplar pests and diseases (17:14)

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Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com. 

Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!

Transcript

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Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer. I'm joined again by our friend, Lou Meyer. He's a regional business developer for the Mid-Atlantic region for the Davey Tree Expert Company. We do occasional series on certain species, and today, tulip poplar, which is a very cool tree, Lou.

Lou Meyer: It sure is. Neither a tulip nor a poplar, but it is the tulip poplar, the Liriodendron tulipifera, which is a fun one to say.

Doug: Big tree, right?

Lou: Big honking tree. These guys get tall, and they get big. They're pretty cool. Part of the magnolia family, so they got those pretty flowers. Usually, they're way up in the canopy of the tree. They're 160 feet tall. You can't see those flowers much, but they are part of the magnolia family. We know it's the tulip poplar, but it's also known by many names. We covered taxonomy. A few episodes ago, we talked about using Latin names or scientific names versus regional names. The tulip poplar, a few of the regional names it's known by here in the United States, the tulip tree, the American tulip wood, the whitewood, the fiddle tree, the linden tree, the hickory poplar, and the yellow poplar.

Now, the name tulip poplar comes from flowers that look like the tulip flowers. When you look up close, they don't really resemble it. Up in the tree, I can see where someone would go, "Oh, it looks like a tulip poplar." Then the leaves on these, when the wind blows, they flutter just like a poplar tree. Put those together, you get tulip poplar. Now, Lirio, the scientific name, the Latin name is Liriodendron. Lirio is Latin for lily, and dendron is Latin for tree. It's not related to lilies, tulips, or poplars. That's how we get to the tulip poplar and the Liriodendron.

Doug: How do people use the tree? Is it something you're planting in your landscape, or is it something we find in the forest?

Lou: Both. We see it in the landscape, especially as a shade tree. It's a very fast-growing shade tree. Now, because of that fast-growing, it also has what we call weak wood. Interestingly, when we talk about wood qualities, we talk about hardwoods and softwoods. Hardwoods would be your oaks, and mainly deciduous trees, and softwoods are oftentimes coniferous trees and evergreens. In 2024, we, the tree industry, coined the term midwood. Not a hardwood or a softwood, specifically for tulip poplar. Because it grows so fast, those cells are elongated.

It's just not a hardwood. It's also not a softwood. All this to say, Doug, I don't like having them growing over my house or too close to my house. Saying that, I have two in my backyard that I love. Now, they're protected in a stand of oaks, so I'm not too concerned about them. These trees grow really fast. They grow thick trunks, and they've been described as a trunk-centric tree. By saying that, they shed branches. Their main focus is growing tall and fast. Now, if you get one out in a cornfield out in the middle of nowhere, it's going to grow wide and short, just like any tree species does.

The main impetus for growth for any tree is to get as much exposure to the sun as possible, so that it can create as much food as possible, so that it can create as much seed as possible, so that it could pass on its genetic material. It's a story of life right there, buddy. These things, they tend to shed limbs. I find broken limbs in my backyard all the time. After storm events, sometimes not after storm events. They just shed limbs because they're trying to grow as fast as possible, so they do away with any expenditure of energy. Now, here in Maryland, if you ask me during storm events what tree falls on houses most frequently, number one with a bullet is a tulip poplar.

What I don't know, Doug, is if that's because of the tree species being more susceptible to failure, or it being the most prevalent tree species here in Maryland. It's a numbers game. We've got a ton of tulip poplars. There's a good reason why they're being pulled off of houses. All that to say, if you have one on your property, I wouldn't just cut it down because it's weak-wooded or midwood or because they do fall over, but it's something to keep an eye on.

Doug: When you classify a tree as weak wood or midwood, what does that mean? Does that mean that during a storm event that you're just going to lose branches, that things are going to crack off?

Lou: Yes, lose branches crack off, or snap in half. If you have a real strong wind shear that comes through, you've got a straight-line wind. If you have a stand of oak trees and a stand of pine trees, you're more likely to have half a pine standing at the end of that storm than half an oak. Oaks and other hardwoods don't typically just snap in half. They fall over in entirety if their root system is compromised. Hickories, same thing. Pines, hemlocks, other softwoods are more likely to just snap because it's weak-wooded or soft-wooded. Yes, great question, though. No, we see these fall. If they're shallow-rooted, they might be a little more shallow-rooted than your oaks and hickories and other ones. Yes.

Doug: What culture do they like? Are they a understory tree, or are they the sun lover?

Lou: Sun lover. They're a colonization tree. Here in Maryland, for instance, we have a giant, somewhat urban, suburban state forest called the Patapsco State Forest. I happen to live a quarter mile from it. I spend a lot of time there. Up until about 150 years ago, it was all farms. This is one of those interesting forest things that people don't think about as much. When you think about your favorite parks that you go to, your state parks, and you go, "Ah, these are the oldest trees I've ever seen," chances are they're not. Chances are that there was a farm field, or they were harvested in the late 1800s, early 1900s, especially here in the eastern region for the iron industry, the steel industry. Deforestation in the Appalachian area was mainly to fuel iron ore. They would cut down trees. They'd cook it into a charcoal. They'd use that charcoal in the furnaces. You see these historic furnaces throughout the Appalachian region, these 100-year-old brick pillars in the forest. All these trees were cut down to fuel that. Patapsco State Forest was denuded. It wasn't a forest at all. Well, now, it's all tulip poplars, or mainly, probably 70% tulip poplar, because they are those colonizer trees. They're the first ones to pop out. No, you don't see new ones growing very often in those forests. They like full sun.

Doug: The leaves, how would you explain what those leaves look like?

Lou: Well, this is a fun one. This is one that my boy, Louis, and daughter, Maggie, love to identify. If you look at the leaf, it's rounded at the bottom, and the top of it are two points. If you hold it up and look at it, it looks like a cat. It looks like a cat's face. You think of Sylvester the Cat or something like that. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. No, the leaves, they're alternate. They're about five to six inches long, so they're a pretty big leaf. The top of it is like a shiny green, and it's paler below. They've got a real nice fall color. Not vibrant like a sugar maple, but a nice yellow color.

Doug: How are they to rake?

Lou: A bit of a pain because of that size. They blow pretty easily because of it, too. You can catch them.

Doug: The neighbor can rake them.

Lou: The neighbor can rake them up really well, yes. They do break down quick, so they're great for compost. If you're leaving your leaves, like we always suggest, if you can, rake them to the corner of your property. By the next year, they're on their fast way to becoming soil. The flowers, like we talked about, they look like tulip flowers up top. They're either green or yellow or a yellow-greenish color with an orange band on it. They're really beautiful. They come out in the late spring, and they hang around through the summer, but they get muted.

They have a ton of nectar, so they're really good for pollinators. Hummingbirds like to feed on them. Interestingly, the honey that is made from the honey bees that feed on them is not a good honey for consuming directly. It's not honey that you would put in your tea or put on your toast. It's really good for baking, though. Now, that's a whole world that I know very little about. I just know that it's out there. On a previous episode, we talked about the black gum or the tupelo tree. That has a very popular nectar for honey that we would consume directly. Interesting to know the differences there in the apiary world.

Doug: Tupelo honey, it's famous.

Lou: That's right. Those flowers are beautiful, and then they evolve to the fruit. The fruit's like a brown, black almost, and it has samaras. The whirlybirds that you think of when we talk about maple trees, the tulip poplar is similar to those. Then those bracts hang on. A lot of times in the late fall, early winter, you look up and you go, "Oh, it looks like flowers are on that tree." It's just the remnants of the fruit that's sticking up there. That's the identifying features of the tulip poplar. Now, we talked about them being big. They grow really big. The tallest tree in Maryland happens to be a 156-foot-tall tulip poplar.

Now, that was 156-foot-tall measured in 2019. Interestingly, it's in a very urban area. Druid Hill Park is in Baltimore City. It's a massive park, beautiful park. The Maryland Zoo at Baltimore is in Druid Hill Park. It has some stunners, though, some big, big state champion trees in there. The tallest tree in Maryland is in Druid Hill Park, big old tulip poplar. The tallest tree in Pennsylvania is 164-foot-tall tulip poplar in Longwood Gardens. You get that one there. The largest, not tallest, but the largest. We've talked about big tree measurements before.

We measure the height of the tree, we measure the circumference of the tree, and we measure the spread of the crown to come up with the largest tree. The biggest tulip poplars in the United States are both in Virginia, Chesapeake City, and Bedford. Likely, they were measured by a gentleman named Eric Weissman, who's a good buddy of mine down at Virginia Tech, who's a renowned big tree hunter. Shout out to Weissman. Good work, buddy. Tallest ever that they've recorded is a 192-foot-tall one. Another interesting specimen is the Queen's Giant. It's the oldest living thing in the New York metro area, estimated to be between 350 and 450 years old as a tulip poplar. Some interesting lore there.

Doug: One thing I think would be interesting for people to understand is how those trees are measured. How do you know how tall it is?

Lou: We do it a couple of different ways. We have tools. The most basic way that a lot of us measure trees non-digitally, manually, from the ground, is what's called the stick trick. This one's very primitive, but it works. You take a stick, straight stick, has to be longer than your arm. Hold it in your hand and turn it back towards you so it's poking your chest. Then hold it straight, vertical. Starting from the trunk of the tree, back up. Obviously, watch where you're walking, so you're not tripping over things, until the top of that stick aligns with the top of the tree in your line of vision. What you're doing is you're creating a triangle with your arm and the stick to triangulate the angle of that tree.

When you're at that point, when the stick is directly in front of you, the top of the stick aligns with the top of the tree, jam that stick into the ground if you can. Then use your measuring tape and measure the distance from the base of that trunk to where your stick is. You have a rough estimate of the height of the tree. Basic geometry right there. Now, the next level up is using laser measuring tools. I've got a Nikon Forestry Pro that's really cool, that triangulates that for you by shooting an invisible laser at the top of the tree. These days, we use drones for these types of things too.

Then, for the champion trees, up until drone usage became really popular, and I imagine they still use it, they climb to the top of the tree. We've got climbers that love going up these. One of my best friends at Davey is Jason Pauley. He's one of our regional trainers. He was out in California not too long ago with our team. They were invited to do some measurements on the sequoias out there, sequoias and redwoods. Those folks love climbing as high as they can and standing at the top of the tree as high as they can safely, while being tied in. You go up there and you drop a measuring tape, and that's the height. Yes. We measure tree height.

Doug: Well, this is silly, I guess. How do you get over the fear of heights when you're doing this job? I have a fear of heights, and I guess I just could never do the job.

Lou: I was never a climber. I was terrified of heights. When I started back in 2001, back in Cincinnati, Ohio, with a small local company, they put me up a 30-foot maple with no equipment tied to me. I made it about 20 feet and said, "Forget this, I'm coming down." [laughs] I got really good at running equipment. I said, "I'm sitting about 15 hours." Yes, [unintelligible 00:15:03]

Doug: You have to have the right person to be a climber, obviously.

Lou: You have to have the right person. Not only is it going aloft, Doug. Climbing 100 feet into the air can be scary for a lot of people. Then you're tying equipment onto you. You've got a chainsaw hanging off your saddle. You're putting forces onto these trees that are stressing them. We rig out of trees regularly. Now, we have a really neat lineup of equipment. Our folks are trained for hours and hours and hours before they get to this point. We're utilizing the tree that you are tied into to hold up tremendous amounts of weight of these large limbs that you're removing.

If there's nothing below you, bombs away. Frequently, we're working over targets. We're working over porches. We're working over patios, over houses. We have to tie off all these limbs. When you do that, the whole top of the tree is shaking around, throwing wind to that and weather events. Then it can get really scary. For the folks that love it, there's nothing better. God love them for doing it.

Doug: It is amazing to watch. I work with lots of people, from Davey, here in the Pittsburgh area. To see them do their thing, safety's number one. It's amazing to watch. Back to our tulip poplar. Is there any use for that wood?

Lou: Yes. Great question. I was going to cover that. The organ makers love to use it. Tulip poplar can take a very fine finish. For those valves that they need to open and close with no air getting in or out, it's really popular for organ makers. You can also use the lumber for interiors and wood carving, and siding. It's not a real pretty wood. You don't do a lot of flooring with it or wood that you see. Yes, there is good use for it. It's a very important forestry tree for lumber usage. One other thing that I wanted to talk about, too, is pests and diseases with this tree.

One of the things I love about tulip poplars is there's really no disease or pests that threaten this tree. I wouldn't say it's bulletproof, but it's as close as a tree species goes. We're seeing the failure of oaks all over the Mid-Atlantic region. We're seeing beaches with the beach leaf disease that we've talked about in the past. Obviously, the ash trees with the emerald ash borer, elm trees with Dutch elm disease. Tulip poplars just standing tall and proud, hanging out there. One thing that does affect them are aphids. Aphids are these tiny pests.

They love feeding on the sugar of the tree. They are piercing insects. They pierce the tree. They feed on the sugars. What aphids do, they don't really damage the tree, but they excrete, which is a fancy word for poop out, this sweet sticky substance called honeydew. In the forest, no one cares about it. If it's over your driveway, you care very much about it. One of the things that we have to do on a regular basis as arborists is help homeowners decide their threshold tolerance. When we talk about these things, we look at a tulip poplar and we say, "All right, this is over your driveway. You park your car in the driveway every night.

In the morning, you come out, it's coated in this sweet sticky substance, and that attracts airborne mold, so it turns everything black. It's just gross and it's bad. You can either spend money on products that will help erase those aphids, which aren't hurting the tree at all, or you can park your car on the street for a few weeks, or you can clean out your garage, maybe move to the other side of the driveway." If you don't have that option, and many people don't, we understand, then treat the tree by all means. We want to help you get to it.

A few years back, I had a client who called me up and she said, "I need you to come out here immediately. I've got a party next weekend. This is 12 days out, and it's raining in my backyard. We're having this party on the back porch." Their house backed up to a wooded lot, and it was two giant tulip poplars over her back deck. I went out there, and sure enough, Doug, it was like standing in a rainforest, just pouring down. Sunny day, just pouring down honeydew. These aphids were out of control. I said, "Look, if these trees were 30 feet back, we'd have no problem.

Yes, you're not going to be out of a party out here," because she's going to be setting up that morning, and everything's going to be sticky and sweet by the end of the day. We ended up treating the trees, and the treatments that we used work pretty quick. She was very pleased. Again, we had to measure that risk tolerance. If the tree's not being hurt, but it's aesthetically or functionally hurting you, how much do you want to spend, and how much product do we want to put out in the environment to offset that? Everyone's different. Finding that middle ground for our clients is a very satisfying thing for us. It's arborist's part psychologist, part friend, just working through it.

Doug: Same relationship that you and I have.

Lou: Exactly. Exactly.

Doug: All right, Lou. Great stuff as always. I guess if I had a tulip Poplar, though, I'd have to clean up my garage. I don't want to do that, but as always appreciate your time, great information, and we will talk again soon. I know that.

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Lou: It was a pleasure talking trees with you, Doug. Have a great day.

Doug: Be sure to tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I am your host, Doug Oster, and I need you to do me a favor, subscribe to the podcast so you'll never miss a show. What should we be covering on this podcast? Let us know. There's a couple of different ways to reach us. You can send us an email to podcasts@davey.com. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S, @, D-A-V-E-Y.com. You can also click the link at the end of our show notes to text us a fan mail message. Your ideas might be on a future podcast. As always, we'd like to remind you on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.

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