152 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



Distribution. Muddy saline shores on tlie coast of the Gulf of Mexico near Appa- 

 lachicola, Florida, swamps of the Brazos River near Columbia, Texas; and in Butler 

 and Duncan counties, southeastern Missouri, here sometimes occupying muddy 

 sloughs of considerable extent to the exclusion of other woody plants. 



VIII. SALICACEiE. 



Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, alternate simple stalked deciduous leaves 

 with stipules, soft light usually pale wood, astringent bark, scaly buds, and 

 often stolonif erous roots. Flowers appearing in early spring before the leaves, 

 solitary in the axils of the scales of unisexual anients from buds in the axils of 

 leaves of the previous year, the male and female on different plants ; perianth 

 ; stamens 2 or many, their anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longi- 

 tudinally ; styles usually short or none ; stigmas 2-4, often 2-lobed. Fruit a 

 1-celled 2-4-valved capsule, with 2-4 placentas bearing below their middle 

 numerous ascending anatropous seeds without albumen and surrounded by tufts 

 of long white silky hairs attached to the short stalks of the seeds and deciduous 

 with them ; embryo straight, filling the cavity of the seed ; cotyledons flattened, 

 much longer than the short radicle turned toward the minute hilum. 



The two genera of this family are widely scattered but most abundant in the 

 northern hemisphere, with many species, and are often conspicuous features 

 of vegetation. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE GENERA. 



Scales of the aments laciniate ; flowers surrounded by a cup-shaped often oblique disk ; 



stamens numerous ; buds with numerous scales. 1. Populus. 



Scales of the ament entire ; disk a minute g-land-like body ; stamens 2 or many ; buds with 



a single scale. 2. Salix. 



1. POPULUS, L. Poplar. 



Large fast-growing trees, with pale furrowed bark, terete or angled branchlets, 

 resinous winter-buds covered by several thin scales, those of the first pair small and 

 opposite, the others imbricated, increasing in size from below upward, accrescent 

 and marking the base of the branchlet with persistent ring-like scars, and thick 

 roots. Leaves involute in the bud, usually ovate or ovate-lanceolate, entire, dentate, 

 with usually glandular teeth, or lobed, penniveined, turning yellow in the autumn, 

 long-stalked, the stalks sometimes laterally compressed, those of the lower leaves 

 furnished at the apex on the upper side with 2 nectariferous glands, leaving in fall- 

 ing oblong often obcordate, elliptical, arcuate, or shield-shaped leaf-scars displaying 

 the ends of 3 nearly equidistant fibro-vascular bundles; stipules caducous, those of 

 the first leaves resembling the bud-seales, smaller higher on the branch, and linear- 

 lanceolate and scarious on the last leaves. Flowers in pendulous stalked aments, 

 the pistillate lengthening and rarely becoming erect before maturity, their scales 

 obovate, gradually narrowed into slender stipes, dilated and lobed, palmately cleft 

 or fimbriate at the apex, membranaceous, glabrous or villose, more crowded on the 

 staminate than on the pistillate ament, usually caducous; disk of the flower broadly 

 cup-shaped, often oblique, entire, dentate or irregularly lobed, fleshy or membrana- 

 ceous, stipitate, usually persistent under the fruit; stamens 4-12 or 12-60 or more, 

 inserted on the disk, their filaments free, short, light yellow; anthers ovate or 

 oblong, purple or red; ovary sessile in the bottom of the disk, oblong-conical, sub- 



