IRbobora 



JOURNAL OF 



THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 



Vol. 6 January, 1904 No. 61 



TWO NORTHEASTERN ALL[KS OF SALIX LUC I DA. 

 M. L. Fernald. 



Salix hicida, with its lustrous foliage and closely flowered golden- 

 yellow staminate aments, is one of the handsomest and easiest 

 recognized of New England willows. As it ordinarily occurs in 

 eastern America the species is a large shrub, but occasionally, when 

 undisturbed, it develops into a small tree twenty-five feet high, with 

 trunks even six inches in diameter. Through the greater portion of 

 its range the species is, for a willow, very constant in its characters ; 

 but during the past few years the fact has been more than once 

 impressed upon the writer that in extreme northeastern New Eng- 

 land and adjacent Canada Salix lucida gradually becomes notably 

 different from the typical shrub, while on the western borders of 

 New England occurs a beautiful shrub so unlike S. lucida in many 

 characteristics that by some who know it it has been taken for quite 

 another species. 



True Salix lucida has the leaves glossy and green on both surfaces, 

 glabrous or glabrate, though when very young bearing some crisp 

 early-deciduous colored hairs. Its mature leaves taper to very 

 elongate (caudate) usually curved tips, while in general outline the 

 leaf varies from lanceolate to ovate. 



The variation of Salix lucida which is characteristic of extreme 

 northeastern New England and adjacent Quebec and New Brunswick 

 was first detected by Messrs. Emile F. Williams and J. Franklin 

 Collins in 1900, although the plant, with its peculiarity unnoticed, 

 for two years had lain in the writer's herbarium. The material first 

 collected by Messrs. Williams and Collins was from a fine tree at 

 Fort Kent, Maine; and during the summer of igoi additional speci- 



