Les, A friend said yes but he called it popple.
And pretty sure he doesn't know scientific name of beaver.
His drywall mudding (sheet rock finishing) skills are
coming along nicely tho.

Im not sure what your asking but the tree in the picture isnt a Tulip Poplar.

They are pretty. Indiana plants the crap out of them.

I like knowing they were the tree the Indians liked for canoes.

Lots of trees were given common names reflecting their similarity in usage compared to other better known trees. That was all they cared about.
liriodendron is Latin for 'lily tree' while tulipifera is Latin for 'tulip-bearing'.
Therefor it should be called the Tulip-bearing Lily Tree, which of course, makes everyone except myself wrong, which happens to be my sole purpose in life as I reach full maturity.
On the plus side, it has been said that I am quiet once you get to know me.

Yes, but not as much as sweet gum.

It most certainly is.

Looks white to me maybe its the way the suns hitting it. If you can get a close up.

.. the other night I was lying in bed wondering why some people name there daughters after holly bushes

…. Then my mind drifted towards white oaks and why the big shag bark ones only drop acorns every now and then

… later I woke up in a cold sweat after a bad dream involving aggressive red cedars

I use poplar as a substitue for Japanese Honoki wood, a magnolia specie to make scabbards and hilts
and also for some of my carving

That is why trees have "scientific (Latin) names!" And thanks to dendrologists with time on their hands and a sense of humor, tulip popular is one of my favorites!

Liriodendron tulipifera

Pete

I have built a bunch of dugouts with them. One thing I learned that completely unexpected is that the wood appears to either never waterlog, or it takes a VERY long time. One that I built in 2012 has been stored underwater, only floating it once every few years for a paddle around the lake or some fish spearing. To raise it from the bottom, I just start taking the big rocks out and usually when there are 3 or 4 left, it starts to slowly come up. When the gunwales break the surface, I bail it out.
I would have never guessed that it would not waterlog in over a decade. Most of the wood is less than 2 inches thick, but the prows have a little more mass, maybe 4” thick.
Here is a picture of the one I built in 2012 being paddled by a buddy a couple years ago. It is stable enough that a person can stand on one gunnel without capsizing. Its big, heavy, and slow, but basically indestructible and definitely unsinkable unless weighted down.

I like using poplar on almost any wood shop project that’s getting painted.

I built my granddaughter’s toy chest out of it.

That's really cool. Do you make the dugouts in a traditional way or with modern tools?

How long does it take to make a dugout?

What's the advantage to keeping the dugouts underwater for storage?

Keith

That is pretty cool.

The reason they are stored underwater is because they do not crack. If you allow them to dry they will crack and split and require a lot of pitch or sealant of some kind to be watertight.

I have made them with both modern and stone tools. One of them the tree was felled by burning, which took about 14 hours, then it was hollowed out by a combination of chopping with stone axes and burning which took several days. It goes faster than you might expect, because we started by using antler wedges and wood glits to split the top and bottom off leaving about a 14” “center beam” which is then hollowed out. We actually found that the most efficient method was to mostly chop it with stone axes, then do a few burns to finish and smooth it. And ethnographic accounts worldwide support that most of them were chopped not burned to hollow. In fact the early North American accounts of burning are all third hand and a little suspect in accuracy. Let me see if I can find the YouTube video of fire felling that one…
Another thing I learned - if the tree is under about 12 or 14 inches diameter, it is faster and easier to chop it down with a stone axe, but any bigger and the effort involved favors burning the tree down. Chopping a 30” tree with a stone axe takes around 40 hours, but you can burn one down in about 15 hours. But under about 12”, the stone axe will have it down before you really even get the fire going enough to do anything.

My skills are improving too,lol, seems I’m getting older and there’s more to it than I ever thought…

More people will see it like this and it's worth seeing.



I have heard of burning trees down,but never seen it before, thanks and thanks for the explanations too.

Keith

I have no idea what a tulip poplar or tulip tree is, but here's an even more confusing one.

The Douglas fir is one of the most common and widespread conifers in the western USA, and the most significant timber producing tree in the Pacific Northwest.
However, it is not a fir tree, it is actually a type of spruce. But what is most confusing is it's scientific name, Pseudo-tsuga Meenziesii: Pseudo-tsuga means "false hemlock".