SALICACE. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 107 
SALIX WARDI. 
Black Willow. 
LEavEs lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, silvery white on the lower surface. 
Salix Wardi, Bebb, Garden and Forest, viii. 363 (1895).— Salix nigra, var. Wardi, Bebb, Ward Bull. U. S. Nat. 
Glatfelter, Scvence, n. ser. ii. 582. Mus. No. 22,114 (Fl. Washington) (1881); Watson & 
Salix cordata, @ angustata, 1° discolor, Andersson, De Coulter Gray’s Man. ed. 6, 481. —Sargent, Forest Trees 
Candolle Prodr. xvi. pt. ii. 252 (1868). N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 166. 
A tree, occasionally thirty feet in height, with a single trunk six or eight inches in diameter, and 
slender spreading slightly drooping branches; usually smaller and frequently shrubby in habit. The 
bark of the trunk and principal branches is from one quarter to one half of an inch in thickness, dark 
reddish brown or nearly black, and deeply divided into broad connected ridges covered by small 
closely appressed plate-like scales. The branchlets are slender, and when they first appear are coated 
with hoary pubescence which often persists on vigorous shoots during the summer ; and in their first 
winter they are chestnut-brown and rather lustrous. The winter-buds are bright chestnut-brown, 
lustrous, and about a sixteenth of an inch long. The leaves are involute in the bud, closely and 
often unequally serrate with minute incurved teeth, lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, sometimes slightly 
falcate, rounded or cordate at the base, obliquely long-pointed, from four to seven inches in length and 
from an inch to an inch and a half in width; or they are linear-lanceolate, gradually rounded at the 
base, and often less than half an inch wide; when they unfold they are coated with pale pubescence 
thicker on the lower than on the upper surface, and at maturity they are bright light green above and 
silvery white below, with slender yellow midribs raised and rounded on the upper side and puberulous 
or pubescent on the lower, slender arcuate veins connected by obscure reticulate veinlets, and broad flat 
petioles which on the large leaves are sometimes three quarters of an inch long. The stipules are 
foliaceous, reniform, rhomboidal or oblong, obtuse, serrate above the middle, frequently half an inch 
broad, and sometimes persistent. The aments appear in May and June, or two or three weeks later 
than those of Salix nigra, and are terminal on leafy branches, which, before the ripening of the fruit, 
sometimes grow to a length of twelve or eighteen inches from one of the upper axillary buds; they are 
narrowly cylindrical, the staminate three or four inches long, subflexuose, and rather longer than the 
pistillate ; their scales are subverticillately arranged on the slender villous rachis, and are ovate, obtuse, 
glabrous on the outer and villous on the inner surface, and orange-yellow. The stamens vary from 
three to six in number, with free filaments coated at the base with numerous long slender hairs. The 
ovary is globose, ovate or ovate-conical, short-stalked, and surmounted by the nearly sessile minute two- 
branched stigma. The fruiting aments, from which the scales fall before the capsules mature, are lax, 
spreading, and from three to four inches in length when fully grown. The capsule is globose-conical, 
about a quarter of an inch long, light reddish brown, minutely glandular, and long-stalked. 
The range of Salix Wardi has not yet been well determined, but it is known to inhabit the 
banks of the Potomac River near the city of Washington, those of the Ohio mm Kentucky,’ central 
1 Salix Wardi was collected by Dr. Charles W. Short near the founded the subvariety discolor of his Salix cordata, B angustata 
Falls of the Ohio River (now Lexington) in Kentucky, in 1840, and (teste Bebb, Garden and Forest, viii. 363). 
upon his specimen preserved in the Gray Herbarium Andersson 
