1. A name for various species of Bombax and Eriodendron.
[1552. Huloet, Cotton tree, gossampinus.]
1670. Phil. Trans., V. 1152. The Tree, call’d the Cotton-tree, bearing a kind of Down which also is not fit to spin.
1697. Dampier, Voy. (1729), I. 164. The White Cotton-tree grows like an Oak…. They bear a very fine sort of Cotton, called Silk-Cotton.
1834. M. G. Lewis, Jrnl. W. Ind., 213. The first cotton trees which I saw, were … withered by age.
1837. Penny Cycl., VIII. 91/2. The Cotton-plant, or Gossypium, must not be confounded with the Cotton-tree, Bombax, or Eriodendron.
2. A name for Viburnum Lantana and Populus nigra; in U.S. applied to Platanus occidentalis, also = COTTON-WOOD.
1633. T. Johnson, Gerarde’s Herbal, 1490 (Britten & Holland). I enquired of a country man in Essex if he knew any name of this [Viburnum Lantana]; he answered, it was called the Cotton-tree, by reason of the softnesse of the leaves.
1808. Pike, Sources Mississ., III. App. 5. The cotton tree is the only tree of this province except some scrubby pines and cedars.
1838. Loudon, Arboretum (Britten & Holland), The female of Populus nigra is called the Cotton-tree at Bury St. Edmunds, the seeds being enveloped in a beautiful white cotton.
1861. Miss Pratt, Flower. Pl., III. 132. (Mealy Guelder-Rose, or Wayfaring Tree)…. One of its common names is Cotton Tree, doubtless from the cottony appearance of its young shoots.
1865. Chambers’ Encycl., s.v. Plane, The North-American plane, or buttonwood, is sometimes called the cotton-tree.
