Progress with a project to locate and DNA fingerprint the Water Poplars of southern England

摘要

What is a Water Poplar? It is the old English name (Cook, 1676) for what, we now call the 'native' Black Poplar or the 'Atlantic race of the European Black Poplar': Populus nigra ssp. betulifolia. Neither vernacular is particularly appropriate as it would seem that many if not all our trees are probably no more native than the 'English' Elm Ulmusprocera; now known to have been introduced to England in the first century AD and to derive from an Italian clone to the east of Rome. More appropriately, itcould be given the less embarrassing appellation Atinian Elm (Gil, L. et al, 2004). Furthermore, Populus nigra extends right across Europe into central Asia and south into N. Africa, so it's hardly appropriate to call P. nigra sensu lato the 'European'Black Poplar. Hence my endeavour to promote the old English name to minimise confusion with so-called 'Italian' Black Poplars/Hybrid Black Poplars and other Euro-American and Euro-Asian hybrids and the various American Cottonwoods.