Quaking Aspen — (Popular Tremuloides)
Shape round-topped, 20-60 ft. tall. Bark greenish white to yellowish brown on young parts, though with dark blotches below the branches, smooth except on very old trunks which become dark and furrowed. Branches slender, often drooping at the ends. Twigs smooth, shiny, tan. Buds slender, shining, scarcely sticky, red. Leaves blue-green with whitish veins, on long flattened stalks. Range: Newf. to the Yukon, s. to N. J. and the mts. of Pa. and Ky., through the Middle West and along the Rockies to Mex., through the Southwest to centr. and s. Calif. This graceful tree with almost birch-like bark, at times, and restless, talkative foliage, is one of the most widespread in the country. Quite common even in the east, it becomes abundant—the commonest deciduous tree, in many parts of the far west and far north. It probably goes as far north as any tree in the barrens of Canada, and in the western mountains it fills the glens and follows water courses and lakes. “With its slender, pendulous branches and shimmering leaves and pale bark, the aspen enlivens the spruce forests of the north and marks steep mt. slopes with broad bands of color, light green in summer and in autumn glowing like gold against backgrounds of dark cliffs and stunted pines” (Sargent). The aspen, in the West, should not be confused with the various cottonwoods (which see.) The cottonwoods too have dancing, whispering leaves, but the aspens are known by the fact that the terminal bud of each twig is small and scarcely at all gummy, while cottonwoods have big, sticky buds.