170 DIOECIA— DIANDRIA. Salix. 



On Badley Moor, near Dereham, Norfolk. Mr. Crowe. Near 

 Cambridge. Rev. J. Holme. About Lewes, Sussex. Mr. Woolgar. 

 In Osier-grounds, but not common in Norfolk or Suffolk, being 

 esteemed a bad Osier. 



Shrub, or small tree. April, May ; and again in August. 



This seldom, or never, becomes more than a small slender tree, 

 even when left to its natural growth, and may rather in general 

 be termed a large bushy shrub, casting its hark in autumn. If 

 cut down every year, it produces rods 6 or 8 feet long, in con- 

 siderable plenty, fit for coarse basket-work, but not equal to 

 S. triandra when peeled. The branches are rather spreading, 

 round, smooth, yellowish, strongly furrowed, and often pur- 

 plish, when young. Leaves on thick and shortish stalks^ most 

 truly ovate, (though a little elongated and taper-pointed,) being 

 rounded at the base, where their two halves are frequently 

 oblique or unequal. The figure in Engl. Bot. is correct in this 

 and all other respects ; exhibiting amongst other things suf- 

 ficient to convince an attentive botanist of the distinctness of 

 the species, the outline of a very large leaf, from a young vigo- 

 rous shoot. The leaves are of a rich shining green above ; pale, 

 opaque, and glaucous beneath 3 with fine, copious veins j the 

 margin beset with small, blunt, often unequal teeth. Stipulas 

 commonly larger than in several nearly allied species, on which 

 character some botanists have much relied, but their size is 

 variable. They are however broad, and strongly crenate, often 

 unequally heart-shaped. Scales of both catkins obovate, yellow- 

 ish, slightly hairy, seldom quite smooth. Stam. 3, sometimes 

 more, equal, thrice the length of their scales. Germ, green, 

 smooth J its stalk nearly equal to the scale. Caps, large, ovate, 

 compressed, each valve tipped with one of the short, cloven, 

 nearly sessile, permanent stigmas. Down of the seeds shorter, 

 and less abundant, than in S. triandra. 



As a British plant S. amygdalina was formerly involved in some 

 uncertainty. Hudson perhaps took it up on the authority of 

 the Linnsean dissertation entitled Flora Anglica, on which he 

 relied for Ray's synonym cited above, and this led him to that 

 of Haller, who received specimens from Dillenius. Thus far all 

 is perfectly correct. What Lightfoot intended is less clear. 

 His description is partly compiled from Haller, and his only 

 authority for this Willow, as a native of Scotland, is Dr. Par- 

 sons, in whose time nobody was well acquainted with it. Lin- 

 naeus hesitated to refer it to S. triandra ; which he knew only 

 from Gmelin's specimens, still remaining in his herbarium, and 

 not as a Swedish plant. Neither had he examined \}ci^jiowers 

 of amygdalina, nor had Lightfoot ever seen them. Mr. Curtis 

 seems to have been contemplating all these uncertainties, when 

 he ''^ strongly suspected S. amygdalina to be no other than 

 triandra.'' Mr. Crowe indeed first accurately compared and 



