Salix wolfii Bebb var. wolfii 

 Wolf's willow 



A. DESCRIPTION 



1. General description: This is an upright willow (Salicaceae) 

 of medium height. The leaves are silvery hairy. The flowers 

 are borne in catkins with the male and female on separate 

 plants. The capsules are glabrous. Slide 5 in Appendix D 

 shows the plant. Note: In a recent report to the Gallatin 

 National Forest (Mathews 1989) , this variety was mistakenly 

 described as having hairy capsules, 



2. Technical species description (quoted from Hitchcock and 

 Cronquist 1964) : 



Freely branched shrub 6-20 dm tall; twigs of the season 

 rather thinly villous-puberlent ; stipules evident, 1-5 mm 

 long, foliaceous in texture, often glandular-serrate, 

 sooner or later deciduous; petioles short, 2-10 mm long; 

 leaf blades entire, usually acute or acutish, more or 

 less elliptic, 3-4.5 times as long as wide, relatively 

 small, up to 4.5 cm long and 1.5 cm wide, or in var. 

 idahoensis to 7 cm long and 2 cm wide, sparsely to 

 densely sericeous or sericeous-tomentose, usually grayish 

 with pubescence, more so beneath than above, but not 

 glaucous; aments coetaneous on short, leaf y-bracted 

 peduncles, some of the bracts commonly well over 1 cm 

 long; scales dark brown or blackish, persistent, wooly- 

 villous, the hairs much exceeding the body of the scale; 

 staminate aments 1-2 cm long usually under 1 cm thick; 

 stamens 2, with glabrous filaments; pistillate aments 

 1.5-3(4) cm long at maturity; capsules 3.5-5 mm long, 

 glabrous to moderately villous-puberlent, borne on a 

 short pedicel under 1 mm long; style 0.5-1.1 mm long, 

 longer than the short bilobed stigmas. Variety wolfii 

 with glabrous (or occasionally only subglabrous) 

 fruits... var. idahoensis Ball, with somewhat hairy 

 capsules, and averaging a little more robust in all 

 measurements... 



3. Diagnostic characters: The following combination of 

 features is used to key out S. wolfii in Montana (Dorn 1984) : 



erect shrub 

 twigs not pruinose 



leaves not linear, about equally green on both sides 

 capsules 0.8-2 cm long, stipes 0-0.8 mm long, styles 0.2- 

 1.3 (1.5) mm long 



Dorn (1992) does not recognize varieties of S. wolfii. 

 Apparently, the only feature separating the varieties is the 



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