Poplar is considered junk wood? This is news to me. I’ve seen plenty of poplar furniture.

It’s too soft to be of much use except the odd piece of furniture (for which it is also terrible because it dents too easily). As a woodworker finishing it also sucks because the fibers tear too easily. Its grain pattern looks bland at best, it ages poorly, and its color is too inconsistent from tree to tree.

That said, it’s one of the most stable woods so it doesn’t warp much so it’s a popular base material for plywood and it’s easy on cutting tools. I usually only use it for the interior parts of drawers.

It also grows very fast, particularly (per acre) if closely spaced, which makes it of interest for biofuels.

https://farm-energy.extension.org/poplar-populus-spp-trees-f...

It's considered to be a poor firewood around here, as well.

Which is all great for arrow shafts actually. Just may need to be thicker than usual.

The Mary Rose shafts seem to mostly have been poplar.

Not that this would be very relevant nowadays but still.

It’s brittle, light and flimsy. It has its uses but is not great for furnitures or burning.

It's often used as trim that's painted over, as many don't consider the wood pretty. I love seeing poplar with a wide variety of colors.

My favorite odd tree is the ginkgo. The way the leaves are look ancient, like a tree from a fargone era. And it is exactly that.

Also the fruit was fun to throw at people when I was a kid... Very stinky.

Poplars have underground roots, but they are not "underground root stems" per se. Their main stem is the trunk we see growing above ground.

I'm mostly using the terminology from the Pando article. The article quotes a "Mitton and Grant" as writing:

> quaking aspen regularly reproduces via a process called suckering. An individual stem can send out lateral roots that, under the right conditions, send up other erect stems; from all above-ground appearances the new stems look just like individual trees. The process is repeated until a whole stand, of what appear to be individual trees, forms. This collection of multiple stems, called ramets, all form one, single, genetic individual, usually termed a clone.