Hybrid poplar???

Many years ago my parent's planted about 3 acres of this tree,grew unbelivably fast, 1-1.5 inches/year the wood was soft and very uncoopertive to split, burned hot and fast like paper. has anyone else worked with this tree? it looks like it cuold make alot of fire wood on small acreage.

I'll mix it with oak, ash or other hard wood I have. To short of burn time for a good overnight burn. I have forty acres of mostly poplar and pine. I purchase logger cords of oak to mix in with it. $700 for a ten cord load.

Yes that sounds like hybrid poplar. It grows fast, burns hot and fast, and if you let it lay around too long it turns to pulp. It tends to get punky really fast, like birch. Mixing it with your hardwoods it will serve you well, also for start-ups in the mornings or a quick hot fire.

Nasty stuff that is! We planted some as an experiment and were really sadly disappointed. It is a very weak tree (see pictures) and they are constantly breaking. There is no way to predict if the weak spot will be high, low or in the middle or maybe just limbs but they really make a mess. There are also so many roots on top of the ground that it makes a mess.

Cut the wood and if you think cottonwood or willow smells, you've not experienced awful smelling wood before! Really disgusting. Wood is heavy with sap but give it a year and it is about as light as a feather. In my book, the trees are almost totally worthless except for the fact that deer will nibble at some of the limb tips or when you cut the tree, the new saplings that grow are deer food. We've gotten rid of almost all of ours. Some pictures below:

yeah, i've burned some poplar.
3 big splits burn fairly nice and bring the stove up to temp pretty quick.
I can get about 3-4 hours out of 3 big splits.

have fun

Dennis, thats interesting...the stuff i cut from my Fthers place was straight as an arrow.
sorry yours was so funky!

chuck

Here in the UK they are using hybrid willows but only for short cycle coppice - I think they harvest on around a 5 year cycle. Stems are usually chipped and then burned in biomass boilers/electricity generation.

The hybrid varieties haven't been bred for strength as an established tree which I guess is why yours are breaking.

I took 2 big Hybrid Poplars out a couple years ago. I hated those trees.
Burned it all in the fire pit and camping.
I replanted with Sugar Maples and Ash and Oak.

Surprisingly the Ash and Maples are growing fairly quick.

Chuck, are you sure it was hybrid and not regular poplar? There is a huge difference in those two. It appears with some other posts that folks are just reading it as poplar but the OP is referring to the hybrid.

We got rid of ours too when we chipped off the pines. I had them go to the hybrids and cut them then we also cut a few regular popple trees too.

Normande are you refering to Lombardy Poplar ?

I doubt he is as there is a big difference in the Lombardy vs the hybrids.

btw, welcome to the forum Jack.

Not sure we just called them hybrid poplar our's were planted close and grew tall and straight some were 24" at base and 60 feet tall in just 15 years.

Those very well might be lombardy popple. This type of tree is used quite often in fence rows or used as borders. The hybrids are nasty things.