Cottonwode II: Cottonwoods are creekside

Last June I wasted the whole month explaining the obvious, that the best tree is the cottonwood.

You didn't think I was done, did you?

Cottonwoods like it wet, so these days you'll often see one in just some low spot in a ditch. Hyperlocal. Lone Tree.

But that's some very modern landscape. Traditionally, more naturally, they were down in the river- and creeksides. Here's August Kuchler in small scale:

That means they’re there when you really need some wood. Everything else is burned. This is how Martin Brokenleg said the Lakota don't see the moon as less than the sun, because she comes to you when you really need the light.

Lone Tree: Wikipedia. Small scale as in a small map of that area and so less detailed; South Dakota is about two million feet wide, so at 1:7,500,000 this map was about three inches. Not much room for the crick. 45.1285 -96.7475. Kuchler, August W., 1964, Potential natural vegetation of the conterminous United States: in U.S. Geological Survey, 1970, The national atlas of the United States of America: Washington, USGS, scale 1:7,500,000, redraft from Robert Wellman Campbell, "South Dakota Vegetation Terms on Maps," 1997, robbcampbell.com. Robert Wellman Campbell, "Cottonwode II: Cottonwoods are creekside," RSS Longa, 4 June 2026, public domain via CC0 1.0.