I’m taking one university class this winter, and I’m getting pretty excited about it. After getting half way through a design degree I’m switching gears completely and taking “Wildlife Biodiversity and Ecology”. Should be very interesting in a completely different way. This is possibly an explanation for my renewed interest in correctly naming trees and animals in my posts. I’d love to know all this stuff thoroughly.
I grew up differentiating poplars between white poplars (what I now know is trembling aspen – white poplar is actually a completely different tree from Europe) and black poplars (a kind of balsam poplar). Not sure if these were local names from Saskatchewan or mistakes. Anyway, these are a kind of balsam poplar near Beaverhill Lake. Not sure if they’re Ontario Balsam Poplar (Populus balsamifera) or Black Cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa).
Congrats on the ecology course—I’m sure you’ll love it. As for the poplars, definitely Populus balsamifera if it’s growing out at Beaverhill (but watch out for Populus tremuloides (Trembling Aspen, or Aspen Poplar) out there too—the saplings can look really similar. I don’t know what they’ll make you buy for class, but let me highly recommend the field guide “Plants of the Western Boreal Forest & Aspen Parkland” by Johnson, Kershaw, MacKinnon, and Pojar, and published by Lone Pine. It’s an excellent reference for the forest types surrounding, and north of, Edmonton.