SALICACEA. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 63 
SALIX BALSAMIFERA. 
Willow. 
Lzaves ovate or lanceolate, acute, glaucous and conspicuously reticulate-veined on 
the lower surface. 
Salix balsamifera, Barratt, ex Hooker, Fl. Bor-Am. ii. 105. — Britton & Brown, Jil. Fl. i. 504, £. 1201. — Brit- 
149 (1839). — Bebb, Bot. Gazette, iv. 190; Bull. Torrey ton, Man. 314. 
Bot. Club, xv. 121, t. 81. — Watson & Coulter, Gray’s Salix cordata, 8 balsamifera, Hooker, Fl. Bor.-Am. ii. 
Man. ed. 6, 485. — Dippel, Handb. Laubholzh. ii. 285, £. 149 (4839). 
Salix pyrifolia, Anderson, Svensk. Vetensk. Akad. Handl. 
ser. 4, vi. 162, t. 8, £. 93 (Monographia Salicum) (1867) ; 
De Candolle, Prodr. xvi. pt. ii. 254. 
137. — Koehne, Deutsche Dendr. 97. — Sargent, Garden 
and Forest, vi. 28, £.5.— Rand, Garden and Forest, vi. 
Usually a shrub often making clumps of crowded slender erect stems, generally destitute of branches 
except near the top and only a few feet tall, Salix balsamifera in a hillside bog near Fort Kent on the 
St. John’s River in Maine becomes arborescent in habit and, growing to a height of twenty-five feet, 
The bark of the stem is thin, rather smooth, and 
The branchlets, which are comparatively stout, and glabrous during their first 
forms a trunk twelve or fourteen inches in diameter. 
of a dull gray color. 
season, are reddish brown and lustrous or chestnut-colored when exposed to the sun, becoming olive- 
green the following year. The winter-buds are acute, much compressed, bright scarlet, very lustrous, 
and about a quarter of an inch long. The leaves are involute in the bud, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, 
acute or acuminate at the apex, broad and rounded and usually subcordate at the base, finely serrate, 
with glandular teeth, and balsamic particularly while young ; when they unfold they are thin, pellucid, 
red, and coated on the lower surface with long slender caducous hairs, and at maturity they are thin 
but firm in texture, dark green above, pale and glaucous below, from two to four inches long and from 
an inch to an inch and a half wide, with stout yellow midribs raised and rounded on the upper side, 
thin primary veins and conspicuous reticulate veinlets; they are borne on stout reddish or yellow petioles 
from one third to one half of an inch in length, which in falling leave narrow slightly raised leaf-scars 
marked by three conspicuous equidistant vascular bundle-scars. The stipules, which are often wanting, 
are sometimes produced on vigorous shoots and are foliaceous, broadly ovate, and acute. The aments 
are cylindrical, from an inch to an inch and a half in length, with obovate acute rose-colored bracts 
coated with long white hairs, and are borne on slender leafy peduncles. There are two stamens with 
free filaments and reddish or ultimately yellow anthers. The ovary is narrow, ovate, gradually con- 
tracted from above the middle to the apex which is crowned with nearly sessile emarginate stigmatic 
lobes. The scales are persistent on the fruiting aments which vary from two inches and a half to three 
inches in length. The capsules are ovate-conical, long-stalked, a quarter of an inch long, and dark 
orange color.’ 
1 See E. F. Williams, Rhodora, iii. 277. 
2 Bebb (Bull. Torrey Bot. Club, xv. 124) proposes these varieties : 
“Typica. Leaves ovate, 2 to 3 inches long, short-pointed or the 
lower obtuse, rounded at base, at length rigid and glaucous beneath, 
with raised reticulate veins, minutely glandular-serrulate ; fertile 
aments very loose, leaves of the peduncle few and large. This is 
the prevailing northern form. 
“Vegeta. Leaves broadly lanceolate, 4 to 5 inches long, acute or 
acuminate, truncate or cordate at the base, coarsely and irregularly 
repand-toothed, paler beneath ; aments less spreading, not so leafy 
at base. : 
“TLanceolata. Leaves lanceolate, 2 to 4 inches long, $ to # inch 
wide ; aments more slender, otherwise as in f. typica. 
“ Alpestris. Low bush, 2 to 4 feet high ; leaves small, 1 to 2 
inches long, lanceolate, pointed at both ends, rather coarsely and 
irregularly serrate, green both sides ; male ament slenderly cylin- 
drical, less silky. Eagle Lake, Mt. Lafayette, alt. 4,200 feet ; also 
on the coast of Labrador.” 
