SALICACE.E 



171 



A tree, sometimes 60-70 high, with a single straight or slightly inclining trunk 

 rarely more than 2 in diameter, straight ascending branches, and slender glabrous 

 branchlets marked with scattered pale lenticels, dark orange color or red-brown 

 and lustrous, becoming in their first winter light orange-brown. "Winter-buds 

 broadly ovate, gibbous, dark chestnut-brown, very lustrous above the middle, light 

 orano-e-browu below, \' long. Bark i'-|' thick, brown somewhat tinged with red, and 

 divided by irregular fissures into flat connected ridges separating on the surface 

 into thick plate-like scales. Wood light, soft, close-grained, light brown, with thick 

 nearly white sapwood. 



Distribution. Banks of streams; near Montreal and in Cayuga County, New 

 York, to the valley of the Saskatchewan, southward to Ohio and Missouri, and 



westward over the great plains and through the Rocky Mountains from southwestern 

 Texas to Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia; comparatively rare in the 

 east; abundant in the lower Ohio valley; the common arborescent Willow on the 

 streams flowing eastward from the Rocky Mountains and in all the central mountain 

 region of the continent. 



4. Salix laevigata, Bebb. Black Willo-w. 



Leaves involute in the bud, obovate, gradually narrowed and wedge-shaped at 

 the base, narrowed and rounded or acute and mucronate at the apex, with slightly 

 revolute obscurely serrate margins, on sterile branches lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, 

 acute or acuminate; in one form narrow, long-pointed, and falcate (yar. angustifolia, 

 Bebb); when they unfold light blue-green and coated on the lower surface with long 

 pale or tawny deciduous hairs, at maturity glabrous, dark blue-green and lustrous 

 above, paler and glaucous below, 3'-T long, f'-l^' wide, with broad flat yellow 

 midribs, their petioles broad, grooved, puberulous, rarely ^' long; stipules ovate, 

 acute, finely serrate, usually small and caducous. Flowers: aments cylindrical, 

 slender, lax, elongated, 2'-4' long, on leafy branches; their scales peltate, dentate at 

 the apex, covered with long pale hairs, the staminate obovate, rounded, the pistillate 

 narrower and more or less truncate ; stamens usually 5 or 6, with free filaments hairy 

 at the base; ovary conical, acute, rounded below, rather short-stalked, glabrous, 

 with broad spreading eraarginate stigmatic lobes. Fruit elongated, conical, long- 



