Other forms: cottonwoods
A cottonwood is a poplar whose seeds carry white fluffy tufts. A stand of cottonwoods, cottonwood seeds, under the cottonwood.
The fluff is what carries the seed on the wind, and in early summer it drifts in enough quantity to look like snow along American riverbanks. The trees grow fast, grow large and die young, and they mark where water is. Note that the name is cotton plus wood, for exactly that fluff.
1nouncottonwoodA poplar whose seeds carry white fluffy tufts.
“We camped by the creek in the shade of a huge old cottonwood.”
cottonwood is a tree.
Cotton plus wood, an American name for the tree from the cotton-like tufts on its seeds.
From cotton + wood.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA