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Black Poplar:

Description. The black poplar grows higher and straiter than the white, with a greyish back, bearing broad green leaves, somewhat likely leaves, not cut in on the edges like the white, but whole and dented, ending in a point, and not white underneath, hanging by slender long footstalks, which, with the air, are continually shaken like as the aspen leaves are. The catkins hereof are greater than those of the white, composed of many round green berries, as if they were set together in a long cluster, containing much downy matter, which being ripe, is blown away with the wind. The clammy buts hereof, before they spread into leaves, are of a yellowish green colour, and small, somewhat sweet, but strong, the wood is smooth, tough, and white, and easy to be cloven: on both these trees grow a sweet kind of musk, which in former times was used to put into sweet ointments.

Place. They grow in moist woods, and by water-sides in sundry places of England; yet the white is not so frequent as the other. Time. Their time is likewise expressed before; the catkins coming forth before the leaves in the end of summer.

Government and virtues. Saturn has dominion over both, white poplar, says Galen, is of a cleansing property; the weight of one ounce in powder of the bark thereof being drank, says Dioscorides, is a remedy for those that are troubled with the clatica. or the strangury. The juice of the leaves dropped warm into the ears, eases the pains in them. The young clammy buds or eyes, before they break out into leaves, bruised, and a little honey put to them, is a good medicine for a dull sight. The black poplar is held to be more cooling than the white, and therefore the leaves bruised, with vinegar; and applied, help the gout. The seed drank in vinegar, is held good against the falling-sickness. The water that drops from the hollow places of this tree, takes away warts, puslies, wheals, and other the like breakings out of the body.

The leaves and buds are used to make the unguent populeon; but as the black poplar is hot, the ointment cannot receive its cooling virtue from those leaves or buds, but from the other ingredients which are put in it. Schroeder says, that women in Germany use the buds to make their hair grow thick and ornamental.