6 Rhodora [January 



Prof. Dudley found S. lucida flowering " May 20-30."] In the Report 

 on Botanical Work in Minnesota for the year 1886, the shrub, though 

 meagrely described, was treated with more assurance as " Salix 

 lucida Muhl., var. serissima Bailey («. var.). Differs from the 

 species in fruiting very late. It occurrs at Lansing, Mich., where its 

 fruit matures in September, assuming a bright red color in the sun. 

 It is one of the most ornamental of the willows. B 357, Mud river; 

 in fruit." ' Two years later, Dr. N. L. Britton, noting from northern 

 New Jersey stations for supposed S. lucida, said : "In Sussex county 

 this willow holds its fertile catkins until late in September." ^ And, 

 again in 1896, in the account of Plants of Monroe County, New York, 

 and adjacent Territory, Misses Beckwith and Macauley recorded " S. 



lucida, Muhl., var. ? In Bergen Swamp. Flowers June 



10-30 ; fruit last of Aug. to Sept." 3 



That the observations of Messrs. Hoffmann, Bissell, and others in 

 western New England are borne out by these records is very obvious. 

 Furthermore, examination of material of Prof. Dudley's Cayuga 

 shrub and of the original numbered plant from Minnesota and the 

 Lansing (Michigan) material of Bailey's Salix lucida, var. serissima 

 shows that those plants are quite like the shrub of the Berkshire and 

 Taconic swamps ; while one of the specimens first identified with the 

 material from western New Kngland was a finely fruited branch from 

 a swamp in Sussex county. New Jersey. 



The late-flowering and fruiting shrub with long thick-walled cap- 

 sules appears, then, as specially emphasized in the comparisons on a 

 preceding page, to be quite distinct from other willows of the J^e/i- 

 tandrae ; and the name first applied to it when Prof. Bailey considered 

 it a variety of ^. lucida recognizes its most obvious characteristic. 

 Its characters and known history may be briefly summarized as 

 follows. 



Salix serissima. Shrub, sometimes 4 m. high; the branches 

 covered with olive-brown lustrous bark, branchlets brown or yellow- 

 tinged, glabrous, lustrous : leaves elliptic-lanceolate, or on young 

 shoots sometimes oblong-lanceolate, acute or short-acuminate, in 

 maturity dark shining green above with a broad whitish midrib, pale 

 or whitened beneath, thick and firm, 4 to 8 (on sterile young shoots 



'Bailey in Arthur, Geol. & Nat. Hist. Surv. Minn., Bull. no. 3 (1887) 19. 

 = Britton, Cat. PI. N. J. (1889) 226. 

 Beckwith & Macauley, Proc. Rochester Acad. Sci. iii. (1896) 103. 



