Originally Posted by
cyccommute
Cottonwood belongs to the poplar family. While it grows fairly rapidly, it's somewhat slow for energy crops. Aspen and other hybrid poplars grow faster.
However, I'm not carrying any sort of tree on a tour, nor preplanting my routes with a specific crop, so it comes down to what's available on site. Most places I could ride to within 3-5 days, cottonwoods are often a nuisance, planted generations ago by someone who wanted a fast growing shade tree and didn't consider their tendency to drop several hundred pound limbs or just plain die and fall over on whatever they were shading. They do, however, tend to fall more or less intact, so lots of branches are kept off the ground for years. Essentially, even though the trunk is down and rotting, you can get a lot of "standing" dead wood off of them for campfires.
One thing I am curious about; has anyone tried really hot burning woods in these stoves? Mesquite, bois d'arc and pecan are also common around here, and of course, 98+% of mesquite trees are unwanted anyway, so nobody objects to harvesting them for firewood. Not really an issue if you just want a handful of wood for breakfast anyway, but in a longer term situation it might be worth splitting some larger chunks down for the stove.