292 OHIO STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



The flowering season of Salix interior is much longer than 

 that of any other of our willows; it begins just after the pussy 

 willows have gone by and continues late into the summer. I 

 have even seen blossoms in October and on Cedar Point they are 

 not uncommon in July and August. The first catkins come out 

 on short peduncles with a few small bracts. Later when the 

 season's twigs have developed, they also bear aments at their 

 tips. Just below these terminal catkins develop other lateral a- 

 ments which blossom later and so prolong the season. We have 

 no other willow which does this and the presence of these small 

 undeveloped aments is very characteristic. The carpellate 

 aments are generally but not always quite lax as they grow older. 

 The flowers have a tendency, sometimes very marked, to appear 

 in fascicles of from three to five on the rachis with a distinct in- 

 terval between them. This is another characteristic feature 

 present in no other species. The scales are yellow, deciduous, 

 the filaments frequently pubescent. The ovularies at anthesis 

 are scarcely longer than the scales with sessile stigmas on their 

 summits. They vary much in shape being sometimes, especially 

 when very hairy, thick and short with a squarely cut off tip, 

 sometimes nearly rostrate especially when glabrous. The ma- 

 ture capsules are narrowly conic, blunt pointed so as to be almost 

 cylindric if not well fertilised. When well developed they are 

 quite large (1 cm.) sometimes glabrous sometimes tomentose. 

 This variation makes them a puzzling problem and one would sup- 

 pose there were several species instead of one but there seem to 

 be no lines of cleavage between the different forms. 



Salix interior is with the exception of its own variety wheeler i 

 and the Texan 5. thurberi the only representative of the longifo- 

 liae east of the Rockies. It extends all oves the Mississippi valley 

 and is occasionally met with east of the Alleghanies. In Ohio 

 it is common everv where. 



Salix interior var. wheeleri Rowlee. Wheeler's Long-leaved 



Willow. 



This variety as I have seen it in Ohio sometimes acquires a 

 slender tree form, but more generally is a low much branched 

 dwarf bush, spreading in the sand by the sprouting of buried 

 stems. These do not as in the species produce a dense clump of 

 stems close together but come up only at distances of a meter or 

 so and the result is a loose clump the members of which appear 

 like independent plants. In extreme forms, the leaves especially 

 the older ones from the axils of which branches come out, are 

 very much broader than in the species (7-10 cm. x 2 cm.), dark 

 green and glabrous with the typical venation of the longifoliae, 

 except that the primaries are rather closer and more ascending. 

 These extreme forms as they intergrade into the narrow glabres- 

 cent leaves of the species pass through a series of forms which 



