Question

Which plant is described by these clues? Its rot-resistant timber was prized by builders for wet ground, driven in as pilings under structures raised over marsh and lagoon because it hardens rather than decays when kept submerged. Its roots carry small {nodules} that house soil actinobacteria and fix nitrogen straight from the air, letting it flourish on raw mineral soil where most trees starve. In late winter, before a single leaf unfurls, the same tree hangs slender yellow-brown pollen {catkins} beside shorter, upright, reddish seed-{catkins}. Those seed-catkins ripen into hard, woody {strobiles} barely 0.5 to 0.75 inch (1.5 to 2 cm) long that cling to the bare twigs all winter. Broadly egg-shaped leaves 3 to 6 inches (7 to 15 cm) long are doubly {serrate}, and their very edges are {revolute}, rolled under toward the pale downy underside. Its trunk wears smooth, pale ashy-grey bark that flushes a warm rusty tone wherever a blade nicks or scrapes it. A fast pioneer of wet ground, it seizes stream banks, floodplains, and fresh landslide scars along the Pacific Northwest coast from sea level to about 3,000 feet (900 m). The largest of its kind on the continent, it races upward 3 to 5 feet (0.9 to 1.5 m) a year to reach 40 to 80 feet (12 to 24 m) tall. Its species epithet is simply the Latin word for the warm colour that floods the freshly cut inner bark within minutes of the axe. Coastal peoples steeped its bark to dye fishing nets a russet brown and burned its mild sweet wood to smoke salmon, a common streamside tree whose two-word name pairs a colour with its kind.

Accepted Answer

Alnus rubra

Name That Plant #067