77 ,,;,■■ 



•J" 



THE COLLECTING AND STUDY OF WILLOWS. 



By F. Buchanan White, M.D., F.L.S. 



A RECENT examination of several public and private herbariums 

 has too clearly shown that Prof. Babin^ton's statement — quoted by 

 Mr. Leefe in this Journal nearly twenty years ago — "that the British 

 Willows are a disgrace to our flora," is still too true^ Recently 

 many obscure points in the botany of our islands have beexi, or are 

 being, cleared up, and our knowledge of various difficult genera, 

 such as Uusa, liubus, Hieraclum, and PotcDiiot/'ton, is vastly increased ; 

 but the genus Sali.c has remained much in the same condition for 

 many years, and the only real advance which has been made since 

 Smith's time has been in reducing many of the Smithian and other 

 supposed species to the rank of varieties. The chief shortcoming 

 on the part of British botanists in regard to the Willows has been 

 the ignorance, or ignoring, of the work of the continental salicolo- 

 gists with relation to the phenomenon of hybridism in the genns. 

 Only a few of the species which occur are in Britain recognised as, 

 or supposed to be, hybrids, but many botanists seem to be unaware 

 that theoretically every Willow will hybridise with almost every 

 other species, and that practically the number of hybrids actually 

 exceeds the number of true species. Till this fact is recognised, 

 and these hybrids sought out and recorded, we cannot hope to have 

 an accurate acquaintance wutli the distribution of the British Salices. 

 Another hindrance to the study of the British Willows has been 

 the difficulty of naming the varieties which are still retained in our 

 lists and handbooks, though some of the latter truly say that these 

 varieties are scarcely distinguishable. As for the great majority of 

 these varieties, the sooner their names are consigned to oblivion the 

 better, for of them it may be said that they are voces et praterea nihil, 

 and their retention serves only to render more difficult a study that 

 is already sufficiently intricate. Many of them w^ere founded on 

 cultivated individuals, and, if they exist in nature at all, it is only 

 as ordinary links scattered here and there in a long chain of 

 innumerable modifications. The first lesson, therefore, that the 

 student of British AVillows must learn is to abandon without com- 

 punction almost all the varietal names which appear in the 'London 

 Catalogue.' 



As Smith, Leefe, and others have rightly said. Willows, to be 

 known well, must be studied in a living condition. But, as it is not 

 in all cases or at all times possible to do this, good specimens 

 should be preserved. Unfortunately this is a fact that is not 

 always recognised, and hence many specimens which are worse 

 than useless exist in collections. A proper and useful Willows- 

 specimen should consist of a flowering-example gathered in fit 

 condition, and of two leaf-examples, one from a terminal-shoot, 

 the other from a side-branch. 



In collecting Willows it is of the utmost importance to guard 

 against an admixture of specimens. The bushes should not only 

 be marked, but a note of their situation taken. A good method of 

 marking is to cut Eoman numerals on the bark, but, since this is 



