Exotic Wood poplar

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POPLAR

NOTE: Although I still need to sort things out, it has just become clear to me that I have been SERIOUSLY mistaken about the difference between "yellow poplar" (NOT actually poplar and more correctly known as "American tulip") and "poplar" and that most of my own samples on this page are in fact yellow poplar, not poplar, and should be on the tulip page, not here.
In particular, "Rainbow" poplar (and all of the samples with heavy mineral stain) and wood with seriously green sections, are all almost certainly tulip, not poplar. It appears that the confusion is mostly mine, but is also shared by some vendors, who sell tulip as poplar, especially the veneer Populus spp.
Populus spp. of the family Salicaceae.

As is so frequently the case with woods that have many names and have long been in common use, the names of the various poplar varieties are quite a mess, and what is presented here is not even close to definitive nor does it fully expore the cross-use of many of the names.

Just to give a hint of what I mean, consider that Populus balsamifera is known (among MANY other names) as both "Northern black cottonwood" and "Western balsam poplar".

other common names for poplar are cottonwood and aspen

Populus alba = silverleaf poplar
Populus angustifolia = mountain cottonwood
Populus balsamifera = balsam poplar, balsam cottonwood
Populus canadensis = Italian black poplar
Populus ciliata = an asian variety of poplar with MANY common names
Populus deltoides = Eastern cottonwood, Eastern poplar
Populus grandidentata = largetoothed aspen, bigtoothed poplar
Populus heterophylla = bigleaf poplar, California cottonwood
Populus nigra = Lombardy poplar and black poplar (this is what mappa burl comes from)
Populus serotina = Italian black poplar
Populas tremula = American poplar and white poplar but is also known as trembling or quaking aspen and in Europe as aspen
Populus trichocarpa = black cottonwood, Western balsam poplar

NOTE: the wood commonly called "yellow poplar" (Liriodendron tulipifera) is NOT a poplar, it is a member of the magnolia family and it is also known as (American) tulip (but not to be confused with tulipwood, which is an exotic)

This plentiful and inexpensive common hardwood is very light and easy to work, with an even texture, but surface requires sharp tool to avoid a fuzzy/wooly texture and staining can be blotchy although it takes paint extremely well. Color is generally white to brown, but fresh wood frequently has a green color and there are occasional mineral stains that cause a wide variety of color (see "rainbow" poplar in the pics below). Widely used for boxes and crates and the inner (hidden) parts of furniture drawers.

my samples --- color is accurate on all, both planks and veneer.

cottonwood (not tulip) poplar plank and closeup

two contiguous edges of a cottonwood (not tulip) poplar plank that was cut from one of the larger ones above and then sanded for these pics. The slightly lighter color of the wood in these pics is due to better color correction --- these are more accurate that the pics of the intact planks above.

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

sample plank and end grain --- this sample was identified as "yellow poplar" (Liriodendron tulipifera), which is not a poplar at all and is also known as tulip or American tulip (as opposed to tulipwood which is a very expensive exotic from South America). See comments at the top of the page

end grain closeup of the piece directly above

sample plank and end grain --- this is yellow poplar, not cottonwood

end grain closeup of the sample plank directly above

plank and end grain

end grain closeup of the piece directly above

plank and end grain

end grain closeup of the piece directly above --- color has an incorrect greenish tint. This is poplar (cottonwood), not "yellow poplar" (which is American tulip)

both sides of a plank I specifically selected for the green color (the pics are a little too orange) --- enlargements are there and the pic on the right shows a particularly good view of the grain

more planks, also with some green --- these are tulip poplar

green mineral stain in a tulip poplar plank shot at a lumber yard

lumber yard shot of tulip poplar planks, showing how common it is to find various mineral stain in this wood, especially the green colored stain.

both sides of a tulip poplar plank that I picked up at a lumber yard because of the deep green color --- shown here with a piece of purpleheart above it and a piece of canary wood below it just to validate the color

closeup of the piece directly above

clear veneer with no green

a darker piece of veneer with some green at one edge and a very fuzzy demarcation between the green and the white

a very common type of poplar veneer (planks look like this too, for that matter), with a portion that is a generally uniform green. These pieces have a pretty clear demaraction between the green and white, but that isn't always the case.

a wide piece of veneer with green running through the middle

poplar veneer --- totally green sections cut from wider sheets that included white and brown areas

veneer sheet and closeup --- color is accurate

I have been told by a correspondant that green poplar doesn't stay green very long. That has not been my experience, so I have done a controlled experiment here and the first of these is the control shot (a small plank of light green poplar and a veneer sheet with darker green) and the 2nd pic shows them after a month's exposure to direct sunlight (for several hours a day) on the right side only. To see the complete series, click here: green poplar exposure series

yellow poplar veneer --- this is distinctly more yellow than normal poplar (but it is NOT a bright banana yellow --- the color shown here is accurate)

poplar veneer with some curl showing --- it is just slightly more pronounced than what shows up in this pic

NOTE: the color range on poplar is large, with many shades of cream, brown and green exising in the same plank. To give some indication of this range, I've included here a variety of shots from a large veneer selection. Totally cream and totally green sections are well covered above, so here I've concentrated on brown and mixed green-brown

burl veneer

a really amazing form of poplar known, for the obvious reason, as "rainbow" poplar, sent to me by Dave Kisker, whom I thank for the contribution. This was obtained from B&B Rare Woods, who report that the last time they saw any of it prior to this batch was in the 1970's, so I assume it's pretty rare. The purple color doesn't show up quite right (it's a little too dark) on the whole piece when I corrected the color so that everything else is quite accurate, so I took a separate copy of just the purple part and corrected it.

There are some web pics down below from the same vendor, kindly sent to me by a correspondant. Also, note that someone (I can no longer remember who) told me that the color does not hold up well in this variety, and that the same is true of green poplar.

a rainbow poplar plank that Milton Schmidt, whom I thank for the contribution, was fortunate enough to find at a local store for the regular poplar price. He's made a segmented turning, shown at the bottom of this page, that really emphasizes the color variations in this form of poplar

both sides and both ends of a sample piece of rainbow poplar --- the overall dark cast of this piece supports the contention that this wood darkens with age.

end grain closeup of the piece directly above

plank (and a closeup) chosen for the strong green color and the purple stain. This one doesn't have enough color variety to make it to the "rainbow" designation, but it is the same kind of color streaking.

another area of the same plank (and a closeup) as directly above --- on this end of the plank, the green had turned lighter as you can see

planks and closeup

planks and closeup --- the mineral stains are of the type that create "rainbow" poplar but in this case they have not gotten variagated, just a single color in each plank

both sides of a small plank that has mineral stain (cut from the middle one above)

end grain and end grain closeup of the piece directly above

planks and closeup

plank and end grain --- this is a small piece cut from one that had a pretty uniform light green color that is captured accurately here.

end grain closeup of the piece directly above

burl veneer submitted by Neal Kuwabara who rightly points out that my mystery wood #103 looks almost exactly like this. I'm not sure about the purple tint.

web pics

plank with wet and dry sections

planks

bowl turning blank

burl --- I am familiar with "mappa" burl, which comes from the black poplar tree, but this is the first I've seen of any other burl attributed to poplar.

veneer with some green

veneer

"turtleback" veneer

two pieces that were labled yellow poplar. I've only seen yellow poplar in veneer form and it was YELLOW (see my own sample in the top portion of this page), so I'm not so sure about these pieces.

all labled yellow poplar, the first three being planks and the last being veneer, but the color in the first three looks much too golden in my admittedly limited experience (and the veneer doesn't look quite yellow ENOUGH to me)

rainbow poplar veneer --- fairly rare and I've been told it doesn't hold the colors well at all, but I don't know from first hand experience whether this is true or not

rainbow poplar bowl blanks

both sides of a plank that was listed just as having a mineral stain, but this is the kind of stain that produces what is called rainbow poplar

more "rainbow" poplar (mineral stain)

"gray" poplar veneer

spalted poplar

bookmatched burl with very suspect color

bowl

heart-shaped paddle, created by Dave Bush (thanks for the pic Dave) who reports that this "angel-step" type figure was only present in a few small planks and he's never seen it since. This paddle is about 6"x10".

rainbow poplar bowl

segmented turning of rainbow poplar (the base is black ash, but ALL of the other segments are poplar and all are from the same plank --- part of the point of this object was to show the color variation within the plank) contributed by Milton Schmidt (the plank he made it from is pictured up with my rainbow poplar pics).