Trees of a Feather Flock Together

Street Smart Naturalist · Nov 20, 2025 · 6m

I have long been pleased in my travels around Seattle to encounter what plant expert Arthur Lee Jacobson called the “ubiquitous exclamation point” of trees—the Lombardy poplar. Tall and narrow, and often in rows, either in a single line or paired to create an allée, Lombardy poplars add an element of arborescent elegance to any street or yard. Or as Scottish botanist John Claudius Loudon opined in his 8-volume Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum (1834-1837), the Lombardy’s perpendicular lines confer “a degree of sublimity…since it is allowed by all writers on the material sublime…that…