POETRY

Tulip Poplar

By Melissa Range     Reprinted with permission from University of Georgia Press
Vertical Divider
Tennessee’s State Tree, Liriodendron Tulipifera, Family Magnoliaceae

I liked its foxheaded look, its four-peaked leaf
whiskering up at the tips; I liked
its hell-no height, so tall I couldn't reach
a branch, even with a boost; I liked it best
goldfinch bright, yellower than the ribbon
we left knotted around it all one year;
I liked penciling poplar in the book
I made in seventh grade, which contained
the leaves of thirty-five East Tennessee trees
and no actual knowledge of trees,
or else I would've written magnolia,
my fake poplar's family name—​
​that waxy, genteel name I like to mock.
I was proud that our state tree could grow
on mountains, in hollers, in my yard
(one dog or another chained to it),
in any shit field from one end of the state
to another, proud it wasn't soft, like moonlight
roping through branches in a habitat
only real on a TV screen.
We never used and never knew
its proper name and didn't want to know.
For my grandfather its names were shutters,
shingles, cabinetry; for my father
its names are the names of forty years
of dogs; for me, its names become the pulp
left in my mouth from some country club south
gracious with trees I hadn't seen and didn't want
to see. I thought it was a harder wood
than what it was because it had to be.

TULIP POPLAR

Liriodendron tulipifera

Habitat and Range: Old fields, cove forests, ravines, riparian areas, and bog edges.

Description and Notes: Tulip poplar, as it is most commonly called, is not a true poplar (Populus sp.) but a member of the magnolia family, as evidenced by its showy clusters of green and orange flowers so beloved by squirrels and ruby-throated hummingbirds. This spectacularly tall tree (up to 190 feet, rivaled in eastern North America only by the white pine), often grows in a dense thicket of other young poplars in an old field or as a towering supercentenarian in a cove forest. Its light-colored wood (“whitewood”) makes excellent barn siding, and its purple heartwood is carefully carved, cured, and polished into dulcimers and fiddles, thus the common name “fiddle tree.”


A Literary Field Guide to
​Southern Appalachia

University of Georgia Press