SALICACEE. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 109 
SALIX OCCIDENTALIS. 
Willow. 
Leaves lanceolate, acuminate, pale, often silvery white, and glabrous or puberulous 
on the lower surface. 
Salix occidentalis, Koch, Sal. Hurop. Comm. 16 (1828). — 
Andersson, Svensk. Vetensk. Akad. Handl. ser. 4, vi. 23, 
t. 2, £.16 (Monographia Salicum) ; De Candolle Prodr. 
xvi. pt. ii. 202. 
A small tree, rarely exceeding in the United States a height of twenty or thirty feet, with a trunk 
sometimes a foot in diameter. The bark of the trunk is dark brown or nearly black and deeply 
The branchlets 
are coated with hoary tomentum which sometimes does not disappear until their second year, when 
furrowed, with connected ridges covered by small closely appressed plate-like scales. 
they are rather light orange-brown. The buds are acute, light chestnut-brown, and about an eighth of 
an inch long. The leaves are revolute in the bud, lanceolate, gradually narrowed and wedge-shaped or 
rounded at the base, which is often unequal, long-pointed, occasionally slightly falcate, and closely 
serrate with minute incurved teeth ; when they unfold they are coated with hoary tomentum, denser on 
the lower than on the upper surface, and at maturity they are thin and firm in texture, bright green and 
lustrous above, and pale or sometimes silvery white and often puberulous below, from two to six inches 
long and from one quarter to one half of an inch broad, or, on vigorous young shoots, sometimes seven 
or eight inches long and nearly two inches broad ; they have yellow midribs raised and rounded on the 
upper side, slender arcuate veins connected by fine reticulate veinlets, and flattened grooved puberulous 
petioles rarely more than a quarter of an inch in length. The stipules are minute, ovate and acute or 
almost triangular, coated with hoary tomentum, and caducous; or, on vigorous shoots, they are foliaceous, 
reniform, rounded or acute at the apex, and sometimes three quarters of an inch broad. The aments 
are borne on short leafy branches whose leaves are usually oblong or oval, rounded at both ends, and 
from one to two inches in length, and are narrowly cylindrical, rather lax, and from two to four inches 
long ; the scales are yellow, oblong-obovate, gradually narrowed at the apex and villous on the back. 
The stamens are generally five or six in number, with free filaments hairy toward the base. The ovary 
is oblong-conical, glabrous, long-stalked, and surmounted by a minute stigma with spreading emarginate 
lobes. The capsule is oblong-cylindrical, long-stalked, and about a quarter of an inch in length. 
Salix occidentalis, which inhabits Cuba and Trinidad, and is the tropical representative of Salix 
nigra, to which it is closely related, is still very imperfectly known. In the United States the species 
is represented by the variety longipes,' which is distributed from the neighborhood of Jacksonville, 
Florida,’ westward through Texas to New Mexico, Arizona and northern Mexico, and the southern 
Sierra Nevada of California. 
locarpa [1867] ; De Candolle Prodr. xvi. pt. ii. 201 (? excl. gongy- 
locarpa). 
1 Salix occidentalis, var. longipes, Bebb, Garden and Forest, viii. 
363 (1895). (See Plates cccelxv., eccelxvi.) 
Salix longipes, Andersson, Ofvers. Vetensk. Akad. Férhandl. xv. 
114 (Bidr. Nordam. Pilarter) (? excl. var. pubescens) (1858) ; 
Salix nigra, subspec. longipes venulosa, Andersson, Svensk. Vet- 
ensk. Akad. Handl. l. c. (1867) ; De Candolle Prodr. 1. c. 
Proc. Am. Acad. iv. 53 (? excl. var. pubescens). 
Salix Wrightii, Andersson, Ofvers Vetensk. Akad. Férhandl. 1. c. 
115 (1858) ; Proc. Am. Acad. l. c. 55 (according to Bebb [l. c.], 
only a monstrous form with abbreviated aments caused by the 
contraction of the rachis). 
Salix nigra, subspec. longipes, Andersson, Svensk. Vetensk. Akad. 
Handl. ser. 4, vi. 22 (Afonographia Salicum) (? excl. var. gongy- 
Salix nigra, subspec. Wrightii, Andersson, Svensk. Vetensk. Akad. 
Handi. 1. c. (1867) ; De Candolle Prodr. l. c.— Bebb, Bot. Gazette, 
xvi. 103. — Coulter, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. ii. 419 (Man. Pl. 
W. Texas). 
Salix nigra venulosa, Coville, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. iv. 199 
(Bot. Death Valley Exped.) (1893). 
* Salix occidentalis, var. longipes, has been collected in the neigh- 
