The Beautiful Colorado Aspen Trees

Throughout its fantastic history, Colorado is well known for its aspen trees. Many people have even deemed Colorado as synonymous with this famous white-barked tree which produces beautiful fluttering leaves. John Denver even sang about them, and a famous ski village is named after them—the city of Aspen. To put it simply, the aspen tree is a big deal in the state of Colorado.

The Colorado aspen trees are a vital part of the state’s forest ecosystem. These trees generally are the first trees to grow in a burned out area, and unlike the conifers, the aspen trees grow from root stock, commonly known as suckers, instead of a seed. This unique nature provides them a head start over the other forest plants since root stock is rarely burnt out during a fire. The aspen tree is actually a deciduous tree. It loses its beautiful leaves each fall.

Although most of them stand shorter than the rest of the forest trees, aspens are actually harder to be pulled out. You can’t just dig it up by way of yanking roots out of the dirt and be done with it. Even some of the baby aspen trees that are as thin as a pencil and no more than six inches tall generally resisted as if they are much larger if you try to uproot them.

The Colorado aspen tree can propagate in two different ways. They can reproduce through seeds, which is just the typical typical way that we expect for an average plant. However, aspens sometimes reproduce by way of a reproduction method known as cloning. In this method, the aspen trees share a root system by attaching to each other deep under the forest floor. So perhaps those baby aspen trees that resist being uprooted are part of a much larger colony of trees.