SALICACEZ. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 141 
SALIX NUTTALLII. 
Black Willow. 
LzEavEs oblong-obovate, acute, acuminate or rounded at the apex, bright yellow- 
green on the upper surface. 
Salix Nuttallii, Sargent, Garden and Forest, viii. 463 Bot. 336.— Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census 
(1895). U. S. ix. 169. — Coville, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. iv. 
Salix flavescens, Nuttall, Sylva, i. 65 (not Host) (1842). — 198 (Bot. Death Valley Exped.).— F. Kurtz, Bot. Jahrb. 
Bebb, Brewer & Watson, Bot. Cal. ii. 86 (in part) ; Bot. xix. 406 (Fl. Chilcatgebietes). 
Gazette, vii. 129; xvi. 105; Coulter Man. Rocky Mt. 
A tree, occasionally thirty feet in height, with a short trunk rarely exceeding a foot in diameter, 
and slender pendulous branches which form a rather compact round-topped shapely head. The bark is 
thin, dark brown slightly tinged with red, and divided into broad flat ridges. The branchlets are stout 
and marked with scattered yellow lenticels, and at first are coated with pale pubescence which soon 
disappears or often continues to cover them until midsummer; during their first season they vary in 
color from bright yellow to dark orange-color, and in their second year are dark red-brown and 
roughened by the conspicuous elevated leaf-scars. The buds are ovate, acute, nearly terete or slightly 
flattened, with narrow lateral wing-like margins, and are light or dark orange-color, glabrous or pilose 
at the base, and about a quarter of an inch in length. The leaves are involute in the bud, oblong- 
obovate, gradually narrowed and wedge-shaped at the base, which is often unequal, acute or abruptly 
acuminate with short or long points or broad and rounded at the apex, and entire or remotely and 
irregularly crenately serrate; when they unfold they are pilose above and coated below with pale 
pubescence or tomentum, and at maturity are thin and firm in texture, dark yellow-green and lustrous 
on the upper surface, pale and glabrous or pilose on the lower, from an inch and a half to four inches 
long and from half an inch to an inch and a half wide, with broad yellow pubescent midribs, slender 
veins forked and arcuate within the slightly thickened and revolute margins and connected by 
conspicuous reticulate veinlets, and slender puberulous petioles from one quarter to one half of an inch 
in length; the lowest leaves are ovate, acute, and coated with thick hoary tomentum, and fall when 
less than an inch in length. The stipules are foliaceous, semilunar, glandular-serrate, from an eighth 
to a quarter of an inch long, and caducous. The aments, which appear before the unfolding of the 
leaves, are oblong-cylindrical, erect, and nearly sessile on short tomentose branches furnished with 
two or three small scale-like caducous or persistent leaves coated with long white hairs; those of the 
staminate plant are about an inch long and rather more than half an inch thick, and those of the 
pistillate plant are an inch and a half long, about three eighths of an inch thick, and rather lax, becoming 
from two to three inches in length when the capsules mature ; the scales are oblong, narrowed at both 
ends and acute at the apex, dark-colored, coated with long white hairs, and persistent under the fruit. 
The stamens are two in number, with free glabrous filaments. The ovary is cylindrical, long-pointed, 
coated with hoary pubescence, crowned with the nearly sessile broad emarginate stigmas, and raised on a 
short stalk about one third as long as the scale. The capsule is light reddish brown, coated with pale 
pubescence, and about a third of an inch in length. 
Salix Nuttallii inhabits the borders of mountain streams usually only at high elevations, and is 
distributed from southern Assiniboia and the banks of the Columbia River, near Donald in British 
