"[He] proceeded to clear for us a path to the foot of an enormously tall tulip-tree, which stood, with some eight or ten oaks, upon the level, and far surpassed them all, and all other trees which I had then ever seen, in the beauty of its foliage and form, in the wide spread of its branches, and in the general majesty of its appearance."

Edgar Allan Poe - The Gold Bug (1845)

Liriodendron tulipifera L. is a deciduous tree, native to the eastern United States from Massachusetts to Florida.

For further information, see the Virginia Cooperative Extension.