cottonwoods

Noun

cottonwood (plural cottonwoods)

1. A tree from one of number of species of tree in the genus Populus (poplars), typically growing along watercourses, with fluffy catkins.
   • Between these canyons the river has a low but rather narrow flood plain, with cottonwood groves scattered here and there, and a chaparral of mesquite bearing beans and thorns.1895, J[ohn] W[esley] Powell, chapter I, in Canyons of the Colorado, Meadville, PA: Flood & Vincent; republished as The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons, New York: Dover, 1961...
2. Populus sect. Aigeiros, a taxonomic section of the poplar genus
3. A cottonwood hibiscus (Talipariti tiliaceum, syn. Hibiscus tiliaceus), a flowering shrub or tree in the mallow family.
4. A tree of species Ceiba pentandra, native to the American tropics and west Africa; silk-cotton tree.
   • There is no break in the trees. That is the wonder and the mystery of it. There where you see light-green rushes instead of dark-green undergrowth, there between the great cotton woods, that is my private gate into the unknown.1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC
5. Several species of trees endemic to New Zealand.

See all 19 meanings of cottonwood