"In the Mormon country...you see the characteristic trees, long lines of them along ditches, along streets, as boundaries between fields and farms....These are the 'Mormon trees,' Lombardy poplars. Wherever they went the Mormons planted them. They grew boldly and fast, without much tending, and they make the landscape of the long valleys of the Mormon country something special and distinctive. The view across one of these valleys from the alluvial aprons of the mountains, when the wind is bending the tall poplars and the whole land leans a little tipsily and even the shadows yaw on tight alfalfa fields, and brown pasture land, is a view one does not immediately forget."

Wallace Stegner, 1942