187 Records

Bigtooth Aspen is distributed from Nova Scotia to northeastern North Dakota, through the Lake States, in the northeasten U.S., and along the Appalachians to Tennessee. It is a pioneer tree that colonizes open, disturbed areas. Although mature trees are easily damaged by fire because of their thin bark, Big-Toothed Aspen can rapidly regenerate because its underground runners produce clonal trees quickly. This cloning ability makes Bigtooth Aspen important in reclaiming logged and eroded lands, old fields, and mine sites.

A small to medium sized tree. The trunk is relatively straight and the crown sparse. Leaves are roughly circular in outline, with large teeth. The leafstalks are flattened perpendicular to the plane of the blade. The leaves are white-woolly beneath when young. Bark is gray and mostly smooth in young trees but becomes gray-brown, rough, and deeply furrowed in older specimens. Flowers are small catkins, male and female borne on separate trees. Fruits are small, narrow capsules closely packed on the female catkin. The root system is shallow, woody, and widely spreading, giving the species its ability to produce clonal trees quickly. As a successional species, Bigtooth Aspen is not generally long lived, but can reach 100 years.

Bigtooth Aspen is often found in sandy soils of stream valleys and slopes, but also occurs on many other kinds of sites, including swampy ones.

Host plant to various moth species including Gypsonoma substitutionis, Black-rimmed Prominent Moth, Common Gluphisia Moth, Black-etched Prominent Moth, and possibly Four-spotted Gluphisia Moth (Gilligan, Wright, & Gibson, 2008, Miller et al., 2018).

A favorite food of beavers and also used in their dams (Brown and Brown, 1972).