Eastern Cottonwood and Solar Farm Traditional Cache

The Eastern Cottonwoods are across the road as is the Solar Farm. This is a P&G. Beware though, the slope is steep off the road. The ditch may be wet. It's dry right now.

Eastern Cottonwood

Populus deltoides, the eastern cottonwood or necklace poplar, is a cottonwood poplar native to North America, growing throughout the eastern, central, and southwestern United States, the southernmost part of eastern Canada, and northeastern Mexico.

Description

Foliage

Populus deltoides is a large tree growing to 20–40 m (65–130 ft) tall and with a trunk up to 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) diameter, one of the largest North American hardwood trees. The bark is silvery-white, smooth or lightly fissured when young, becoming dark gray and deeply fissured on old trees. The twigs are grayish-yellow and stout, with large triangular leaf scars. The winter buds are slender, pointed, 1–2 centimetres (1⁄2–3⁄4 in) long, yellowish brown, and resinous. It is one of the fastest growing trees in North America. In Mississippi River bottoms, height growth of 10–15 feet (5–5 m) per year for a few years have been seen. Sustained height growth of 5-foot (1.5-meter) height growth and 1-inch (2.5-centimeter) diameter growth per year for 25 years is common.

The leaves are large, deltoid (triangular), 4–10 cm (1 1⁄2–4 in) long and 4–11 cm (1 1⁄2–4 1⁄4 in) broad with a truncated (flattened) base and a petiole 3–12 cm (1 1⁄4–4 3⁄4 in) long. The leaf is very coarsely toothed, the teeth are curved and gland tipped, and the petiole is flat; they are dark green in the summer and turn yellow in the fall (but many cottonwoods in dry locations drop their leaves early from the combination of drought and leaf rust, making their fall color dull or absent). Due to the flat stem of the leaf, the leaf has the tendency to shake from even the slightest breeze. This is one of the identifying characteristics.

It is dioecious, with the flowers (catkins) produced on single-sex trees in early spring. The male (pollen) catkins are reddish-purple and 8–10 cm (3 1⁄4–4 in) long; the female catkins are green, 7–13 cm (2 3⁄4–5 in) long at pollination, maturing 15–20 cm (6–7 3⁄4 in) long with several 6-to-15-millimeter (1⁄4-to-9⁄16-inch) seed capsules in early summer, which split open to release the numerous small seeds attached to cotton-like strands.

Populus deltoides subsp. deltoides, eastern cottonwood is found in southeastern Canada (the south of Ontario and Quebec) and the eastern United States (throughout, west to North Dakota to Texas)

Uses

Timber: The wood of eastern cottonwood is light, soft, and weak. It is not durable, warps badly in drying, and is difficult to season. It is used principally for containers, interior parts of furniture, corestock in plywood, and high-grade pulp. Erosion control: It is planted on strip mine spoils for erosion control and wood production. Male, nonhybrid adapted clones make good selections for windbreaks in multi-row installations. Recreation: Due to its rapid growth rate, it is frequently used for providing quick shade around recreational developments, campsites and picnic areas.

Landscape and beautification: This species is occasionally planted as an ornamental shade tree, however caution should be used because the tree grows large and is susceptible to wind and ice damage. 

Eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides), one of the largest eastern hardwoods, is short-lived but the fastest-growing commercial forest species in North America. It grows best on moist well-drained sands or silts near streams, often in pure stands. The lightweight, rather soft wood is used primarily for core stock in manufacturing furniture and for pulpwood. Eastern cottonwood is one of the few hardwood species that is planted and grown specifically for these purposes.

Solar Farm

Snyder Road Solar Farm (Ole Gustafson)Cornell’s first megawatt scale renewable electric energy generation project since 1904, the Cornell Snyder Road Solar Farm is a 2MWdc array on Cornell property in the Town of Lansing. It was completed in September 2014 and is expected to reduce the university’s annual GHG emissions by 650 metric tons per year. Cornell partnered with a private developer, Distributed Sun LLC, to implement this project. The partnership between Cornell, NYSERDA, Distributed Sun, Building Energy and ABM, and the cooperation of the Town of Lansing and our utility NYSEG is what made this project possible, and is what is needed to enable more projects like it.

The solar farm is connected to the grid via “remote net metering”. This allows an entity to build a renewable energy project (e.g. solar, wind, etc.) where it has space that is well-suited for this purpose, and to credit the energy value generated by the project towards consumption of energy at another location.

The cache is a tied in, camoed "micro" pill bottle, the Push hard to open and close kind. It holds a rolled log with a rubber band and a tiny plastic bag. Please BYOP, no tweezers and put everything back as you found it. Don't forget to seal the zip lock