

















REVISION OP THE BRITISH WILLOWS. 



333 































A Revision of the Bmmsh Willows. 

 By F. Buchanan White, M.D., F.L.S. 



[Read 6th June, 1889.] 

 (Plates IX. -XI.) 



I. Introductory. 



" Hunc locum sibi postulat Salicum fatnilia, quae si ulla in 



Botanicis obscura, baec sane maxime," wrote Linne ia the ' Flora 



Lapponica,' and the unanimity with which all salicologists have 



echoed the sentiment is eminently suggestivp. For the following 



attempt at a revision of the British Salices I would therefore 



bespeak a lenient criticism on the part of those interested in the 

 subject. 



Though the verdict, pronounced some years ago by one of 

 the most eminent of our botanists*, that the u definition 

 and classification of Willows has long been a disgrace to 

 systematic botany," is still too true, it must not be forgotten 

 that in the early post-Linnean days of botanical science much 

 good work was done by British salicologists. "Full thirty 

 yearn," says Sir J. E. Smith, " have I laboured at this task " (of 

 specific definition), " ten of them under the instructive auspices of 

 my late friend Mr. Crowe, in whose garden every Willow that 



could be got was cultivated The plants were almost daily 



visited and watched by their possessor, whom no character or 

 variation escaped ; seedlings innumerable, springing up all over 

 the ground, were never destroyed till their species were deter- 

 mined, and the immutability of each verified by our joint inspec- 

 tion. This was the more material, to set aside the gratuitous 

 suppositions of the mixture of species, or the production of new 

 or hybrid ones, of which, no more than of any change in estab- 

 lished species, I have never met with an instance." (Eng. Fl. iv. 

 p. 164.) 



In the work just cited 64 " species " of British Willows are 

 described, a number which may be contrasted with the 

 of BabingWs 'Manual' T8th 



30 



edition, 1881), and the 18 of 

 ^looker's « Student's Flora ' (3rd edition, 1884) ; but since in the 

 latter hybrid forms are not numbered, the comparison with the 

 former i B more just. 



Smith's species were not suppressed all at once. The sali- 

 cologists who followed him were rightly so imbued with a con- 

 sciousness of his great labours, that they were naturally averse 



* Professor Babington, in Journ. Bot. i. (1863) p. 167. 



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