82 SALICACE^E. Myrica. 



attenuate to a short petiole, serrate above the base, pubescent especially on the mar- 

 gin, as also the branchlets : staminate aments cylindrical, 5 to 8 lines long, many- 

 flowered ; bracts imbricated, glabrous, brown with a scarious border, very broadly 

 ovate, acute, 1 lines long: stamens 3 or 4, shorter than the bracts, the filaments 

 united at base : pistillate aments 2 lines becoming 4 or 5 lines long, the bracts similar 

 but much smaller : nutlets a line long, laterally compressed and winged by the 

 thickened acutely tipped bractlets, naked or with scattered resinous globules. 

 Proc. Am. Acad. x. 350. M. Gale, Benth. in PL Hartw. 336. 



Collected by Hartweg on the Sacramento, by Fremont, near Big Tree Grove (Bolandcr) and near 

 Clark's Station on the South Fork of the Merced by Muir. Much resembling M. Gale, Linn., of 

 Europe, subarctic America and the Atlantic States. 



ORDER XCIII. SALICACKffil. 



Trees or shrubs, with alternate simple leaves, scaly and deciduous or leafy and 

 persistent stipules, and dioacious flowers in terminal aments, each flower subtended 

 by a membranous bract, without perianth ; stamens 2 to several, central or scat- 

 tered upon a glandular disk ; ovary 1 -celled, with 2 often sessile stigmas, and 2 

 parietal many-ovuled placenta; capsule 2-valved, with numerous erect minute 

 comose seeds ; albumen none ; radicle inferior. 



Only the two following genera, belonging to the northern hemisphere, usually preferring wet or 

 damp places. The wood is light and soft, and the bark contains bitter principles (salicin and 

 populin) used in the cure of intermittents as substitutes for quinine. The slender flexible twigs 

 of some species of Salix are in general use for basket-making, and several are extensively culti- 

 vated for ornament ; of rapid growth, and ready propagation by means of cuttings. 



1. Salix. Bracts (scales) entire. Flowers with small glands ; disks none. Stamens few. 



Stigmas short. Buds with a single scale. 



2. Populus. Bracts lacerate. Flowers with a broad or cup-shaped disk. Stamens numerous. 



Stigmas elongated. Buds scaly. 



1. SALIX, Tourn. WILLOW. OSIER. (By M. S. BEBB, Esq.*) 



Aments preceding or accompanying the leaves, with entire bracts, each flower with 

 1 or 2 small glands at base. Stamens 2 (very rarely solitary or the 2 wholly con- 

 nate, in some species 3 to 12); filaments filiform, free or more or less connate; 

 anthers mostly yellow. Ovary and capsule more or less conical ; stigmas short, 

 entire or lobed. Trees, shrubs or undershrubs, mostly confined to the neighbor- 

 hood of water ; branches terete, buds covered with a calyptriform scale, and leaves 

 mostly long and pointed, feather-veined. Andersson, in DC. Prodr. xvi 2 . 191. 



A large and difficult genus of about 160 species, often very variable ; about 60 species are 

 North American, the remainder belonging to Europe and extra-tropical Asia, excepting half a 

 dozen found in S. America and S. Africa. 



Staminate and pistillate aments on short leafy branchlets. 



Trees. Stamens 3 to 5 : scales yellowish; those of fruiting ament deciduous. 

 Petioles not glandular : staminate aments slender, flexuose. 



Leaves linear, green on both sides : scales entire or nearly so. 1. S. NIGRA. 



Leaves lanceolate, glossy above, glaucous beneath : scales denticulate. 2. S. L.SVIGATA. 

 Petioles glandular : staminate aments oblong. 3. S. LASIANDRA. 



* I would here acknowledge my obligations to Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker and Professor David 

 Oliver for tracings and fragments of rare type-specimens in the Kew Herbarium, which have aided 

 me greatly in the identification of several otherwise very obscure species. M. S. B. 



