Nice specimen! Yep, Grey Poplar it is.

Little exercise for you . . . find a stick, and snip it so its length is the same as the distance from your eye to your outstretched hand. Hold the stick vertical, and line it up with the tree. Move forwards/backwards, until the top of the stick is in direct line with the top of the tree, and the bottom of the stick with the bottom of the tree, at the same time. You are now standing at the tree's own height away from the tree. Measure how far you are from the tree, and you have its height.

Resin

Thanks for the tip Resin,I'll have to try it and if I take my camera with manual lens i can use the distance scale to get the trees height. I reckon it must be at least 100 foot tall which is the height for this tree quoted in the book I borrowed(Dorling Kindersley Handbooks-Trees by Allen J Coombes,wouldn't mind owning a copy!) Also of interest I see its a natural hybrid between white poplar,P.alba and Aspen,P.tremula 'widely naturalized from cultivation'. Makes me wonder why this happens in the wild,and also Aspen is found naturally in america but I thought white Poplar was confined to Europe!

A truly lovely tree!

If there are many more like it and the others you have shown us, I can see why you want to make a book, or at least a record of them as a treasure for your locality. Some areas here have, or have had, what is called a "Treasured Tree" project, where people suggest a specimen, and then the tree is measured - I don't know if photos are taken or not. If the tree meets certain minimum standards (I think) then it is registered. It's only for the "glory" of it - I don't even think there are any penalties for the next owner cutting the tree down. And since the program was done before I got here, I am a little vague on details.

Yes dibbit thats it exactly. These big trees might not be around when my kids grow up and it would be a shame for them to go unrecorded. Its surprising how many big lawson's cypress trees there are round here,they just go unnoticed along with fine Spruce Pine and even Redwoods. /\

White Poplars (Populus alba) were very popular in the SE U.S. many years ago, and you can find tons of them growing especially around older houses. Now days there are some pretty big ones although some are dieing back. I think they are a very neat and interesting tree with the green and white fluttering leaves, the white and black bark, and the recurving drooping limbs. But the only big draw back is they sucker from the roots like crazy.

The little green line by that Grey Poplar is not 5 or 6 feet tall but actually around 3 feet tall by using the wooden pole by the poplar as a scale. There are 40 of those green lines to the top of the tree. If the green line was 5 feet tall then the tree would be 200 feet tall, if it was 6 feet tall the tree would be 240 feet tall. But really its around 120 feet (36.6m) tall. 3x40=120.

"Also of interest I see its a natural hybrid between white poplar,P.alba and Aspen,P.tremula 'widely naturalized from cultivation'. Makes me wonder why this happens in the wild,and also Aspen is found naturally in america but I thought white Poplar was confined to Europe!"

Two different aspens - European Aspen (Populus tremula) and American Aspen (Populus tremuloides). Grey Poplar is a hybrid between White Poplar and European Aspen, not American Aspen (there are three other aspens as well, two in eastern Asia, and Bigtooth Aspen in eastern N America).

No reason why White Poplar shouldn't hybridise with any of the other aspens, but I've not heard of any others. Ooops, looked up, yes, there is another: Populus à tomentosa, probably a hybrid between White Poplar and Chinese Aspen Populus davidiana.

Grey Poplar can get up to 40m tall, so Treeguy's estimate of 36m is quite possible, tho' my own guess would be more like 32-33m.

Resin

Two different aspens - European Aspen ( Populus tremula ) and American Aspen ( Populus tremuloides ).
Ah aren't common names wonderful!

White poplar is not uncommon here in Wisconsin either. And I believe a significant amount of natural hybridization has occurred in some areas, between it and both tremuloides and grandidentata.

After a while, it gets to be like willows-almost impossible to trace the heritage of the specimen you happen to be looking at.

+oM

Resin: Your stick exercise will work to determine the height of any tree. Good teaching tool.

Reminds me of celestial navigation - very cool but not used often now since we have the GPS.

Makes me wonder who came up with the idea and how. Its seems a bizarre thing to discover when you think about it. 'The length of my arm is equal to the height of this tree before me' ;)

I got it from one of Alan Mitchell's tree books

Resin

Yea I've also found it on americanforests.org. A pretty good site actually listing the champion trees in the states including some surprises!

To quote Alan Mitchell (The Trees of North America) - "The top of a tree, its base and your eye form a triangle with a right angle between the stem of the tree and the ground. Hence, when the whole tree makes an angle of 45* from your eye, the two sides formed by the tree and your distance from the tree are equal. You are the same distance from the base as the tip is, and were the tree to fall, its tip would land at your feet. This distance can be measured exactly along the ground. To find the point at which the angle is 45*, a miniature of the real triangle is made. Break a stick so that its length is exactly the length of your fully stretched arm. Hold it vertically at arm's length. Move to where the top and bottom of the stick align with those of the tree. You are then at the desired point." His diagram makes it very clear, but I can't reproduce that.

He also says that "unpractised estimates by eye usually much underestimate trees of 20-40 ft, and grossly overestimate trees of 80-100 ft."