266 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



great numbers, in Chelsea, on the turnpike road to Salem, and 

 in West Cambridge, in several places on the road to Lexington. 

 This species is a native of Britain, and has been much culti- 

 vated in England for basket work. For a few years, in moist 

 ground, it annually produces rods six or eight feet long, but 

 these gradually become shorter, and the plant ceases to be worth 

 cultivating. 



Sp. 11. The Bedford Willow. S. Russelliana. Smith. 



Introduced. 



So named in honor of the Duke of Bedford, who first brought it into notice. 



Figured in Sowerby's Eng. Botany, 1807, and Loudon, III, 1518. 



Leaves lanceolate, tapering at each end, strongly serrated throughout, 

 smooth, very pale beneath; footstalks glandular, or leafy ; stipules half he-art- 

 shaped, strongly serrate, pointed ; ovary stalked, lanceolate, smooth, longer 

 than the scale ; style as long as the bifid stigmas ; scales narrow, lanceolate, 

 slightly ciliated. — Hooker, British Flora, 418 ; Loudon, Arb., 1517. 



This tree, a native of Britain, attains sometimes to as great a 

 height as the crack willow, and is considered far more valuable. 

 It is remarkable for the rapidity of its growth in its natural soil, 

 and it grows with more vigor, in the neighborhood of Boston, 

 than any other willow, native or foreign. The favorite tree of 

 Dr. Johnson, at Litchfield, which was destroyed a few years 

 ago by a hurricane, was of this species.* It is extensively cul- 

 tivated in England for poles, for its wood, and for its bark, which 

 has been ascertained to contain more of the tannin principle 

 than the oak. Mr. Lowe, in his survey of Nottinghamshire, 

 says that a plantation of it, of eight years' growth, yielded a 

 net profit of 214/. per acre. It flowers in April or May. 



This tree may be known from the others of this group by the 

 length and brightness of the leaves, their large serratures, and 

 their occasionally leafy footstalks, and by the length and 



* A few years before the Doctor's death, this tree measured fifteen feet nine 

 inches in circumference, at the ground, and eleven feet ten inches at the smallest 

 place below the branches. It continued to increase till 1810, when it measured 

 twenty-one feet in girth, at six feet from the ground. In 1829, it was blown down. 

 Loudon has given a figure of this tree as it appeared at the time of Dr. Johnson's 

 death, and also just before its destruction. See Arboretum, III, pp. 1520, 1521. 



