BOTANICAL NOTES ON BRITISH FOREST TREES. 335 



15. SALLOW. 

 Salix Caprea (L.). Salicinese. 



Shrub or bushy tree, with grey bark, fissured into 

 lozenge-like divisions below; young branches sage- 

 green and hairy, and with a large pith. 



Buds moderately large, ovoid, and showing only one 

 scale. 



Leaves alternate ovate-oblong, wrinkled with pro- 

 minent venation and downy below. Eather large, 

 broad, oblique stipules. 



Male flowers in ovoid, sessile, silky, stiffly erect cat- 

 kins, and yellow anthers. Female longer, with conical 

 ovaries. Scales entire in both. Flowers early in spring. 

 Fruits beaked, very cottony as the minute comose 

 seeds escape. 



Wood soft, close, and reddish white. Pith large. 

 Vessels and medullary rays almost invisible. 



Seeds very small, with a tuft of silky hairs at base, 

 exalbuminous. Little used, as the Willows are almost 

 invariably propagated by cuttings. 



S. aurita is somewhat like it, but more bushy, and 

 with more wrinkled obovate (outlines vary) and more 

 downy leaves and conspicuous stipules. The catkins 

 also smaller. 



16. WHITE WILLOW. 

 Salix alba (L.). Salicineae. 



Distinctly a tree, with young twigs of various shades 

 of yellow and green to purplish. Bark like that of Oak 

 when old. 



