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plural cottonwoods
A tree from one of number of species of tree in the genus Populus (poplars), typically growing along watercourses, with fluffy catkins. quotations examples
Between these canyons the river has a low but rather narrow flood plain, with cottonwood groves scattered here and there, and a chaparral of mesquite bearing beans and thorns.
1895, J[ohn] W[esley] Powell, chapter I, in Canyons of the Colorado, Meadville, PA: Flood & Vincent; republished as The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons, New York: Dover, 1961, page 20
[…] and through the middle of this forest, from wall to wall, ran a winding line of brilliant green which marked the course of cottonwoods and willows.
1912 January, Zane Grey, chapter 8, in Riders of the Purple Sage […], New York, N.Y., London: Harper & Brothers Publishers
Populus sect. Aigeiros, a taxonomic section of the poplar genus examples
A cottonwood hibiscus (Talipariti tiliaceum, syn. Hibiscus tiliaceus), a flowering shrub or tree in the mallow family. examples
A tree of species Ceiba pentandra, native to the American tropics and west Africa; silk-cotton tree. quotations examples
There is no break in the trees. That is the wonder and the mystery of it. There where you see light-green rushes instead of dark-green undergrowth, there between the great cotton woods, that is my private gate into the unknown.
1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London, New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton