Populus tremula European aspen

Introduced to campus in 2021, when a row was planted along the north side of the Center for Academic Medicine. A close relative of the North American quaking aspen (P. tremuloides), it shares the same wind-fluttering leaves implied by their species names, but has slightly larger, rounder-toothed leaves, and bark less white than the brilliant trunks of its American cousin, immortalized in Ansel Adams’ luminous black-and-white photos in the southern Rockies. Like the coast redwood, both species can form clonal colonies; the largest and heaviest organism on Earth is a 106-acre colony of a male P. tremuloides in Utah, delightfully dubbed Pando – Latin for “I spread.”