SALICACER. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 113 
SALIX LAIVIGATA. 
Black Willow. 
LEAvVEs lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, acute or acuminate, pale or glaucous on the 
lower surface. 
Salix levigata, Bebb, Am. Nat. viii. 202 (1874); Brewer Mayr, Wald. Nordam. 287. — Coville, Contrib. U. S. Nat. 
& Watson Bot. Cal. ii. 83; Bot. Gazette, xvi. 103. —Sar- Herb. iv. 198 (Bot. Death Valley Haped.).— Greene, 
gent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 167. — Man. Bot. Bay Region, 299. —S. B. Parish, Zoé, iv. 347. 
A tree, forty or fifty feet in height, with a straight trunk occasionally two feet in diameter, although 
usually not more than twelve or fifteen inches through, and slender spreading branches; or often much 
smaller, with an average height of twenty or thirty feet. The bark of the trunk is from three quarters 
of an inch to an inch in thickness, dark brown slightly tinged with red, and deeply divided into irregularly 
connected narrow flat ridges broken on the surface into thick closely appressed scales ; that of young 
stems and of the branches is dark and broken by shallow fissures. The branchlets, which are slender, 
and coated when they first appear with hoary deciduous pubescence, are light or dark orange-color or 
rather bright red-brown. The winter-buds are ovate, somewhat obtuse, from an eighth to a quarter of 
an inch in length, pale chestnut-brown and lustrous above the middle, and pale below. The leaves’ are 
involute in the bud, with slightly revolute obscurely serrate margins; they are obovate, gradually nar- 
rowed and wedge-shaped at the base, and narrowed and rounded or acute and mucronate at the apex; 
and on sterile branches they are lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, and acute or acuminate; when they 
unfold they are light blue-green and coated on the lower surface with long pale or tawny deciduous 
hairs; and at maturity they are glabrous, dark blue-green and lustrous above and paler or glaucous 
below, from three to seven inches long and from three quarters of an inch to an inch and a half wide, 
with broad flat yellow midribs, slender arcuate primary veins prominent and conspicuous on the upper 
surface and obscure on the lower, and broad grooved puberulous petioles rarely half an inch in length ; 
those at the base of the shoot are scale-like, coated on the lower surface with long pale or tawny hairs 
which also form at their apex a long conspicuous fringe which protrudes from the unfolding bud. The 
stipules are ovate, acute, finely serrate, usually small, and caducous. The flowers are borne on leafy 
branches in slender lax elongated cylindrical pedunculate aments which vary from two to four inches in 
length ;* their scales are pallid, dentate at the apex, and covered with long pale hairs, those of the 
staminate ament being obovate, rounded and broader than those of the pistillate ament, which are more 
or less truncate. The stamens are usually five or six in number, with free filaments hairy at the base. 
The ovary is ovate, conical, rounded below, rather short-stalked, and glabrous; the style is short or 
wanting, and the broad spreading stigmatic lobes are notched at the apex. The capsule is elongated- 
conical, long-stalked, and nearly a quarter of an inch in length. 
Salix levigata inhabits the banks of streams and is distributed through western California from 
Siskiyou County, near the Oregon boundary, to the southern borders of the state, ascending on the 
western slopes of the Sierra Nevada to elevations of from two to three thousand feet. 
1 A form with narrow long-pointed falcate leaves three or four 2 A form with short densely flowered aments and globose conical 
inches in length and three quarters of an inch wide near the  short-stalked capsules is described as var. congesta (Bebb, I. c. 
rounded base, found by Mr. Edward L. Greene near Yreka, Cali- [1880]). 
fornia, is described as var. angustifolia (Bebb, Brewer & Watson 
Bot. Cal. ii. 84 [1880]). 
