A much-abused tree: the rise and fall of the Lombardy poplar

Abstract

Tree species, much like clothing, go in and out of fashion. The purpose of this study was to explore the cultural life of the Lombardy poplar and how it evolved from being greatly admired to reviled in the USA. Despite early widespread popularity, the Lombardy poplar fell swiftly from grace and bore the brunt of an unusually high level of hostility—it was variously called odious, nasty, greedy, and worthless. The country’s growing xenophobia and hostility to immigrants in the nineteenth century and the Know-Nothing Movement certainly reinforced and prolonged the hatred of the Lombardy Poplar as a ‘useless foreigner’, but this paper argues that though certainly tied to the early nativist movement, the shunning of the tree was more complex. It began in Philadelphia, with an unfounded claim that the Lombardy poplar produced a worm whose bite caused instant death, which led to panicked calls for the destruction of all poplars in the city. The worm fiasco was followed by changes in horticultural fashion, a growing sense of pride in all things American, and a greater appreciation for the admirable, even superior, qualities of their own native trees.