AMERICAN FORESTRY 



THE WEEPING WILLOW 

 The tree is very popular {or ornamental purpose and in this photograph is shown in one of the situations for which it is best suited. 



earliest forms of the large group of plants with netted veined 

 leaves that produce seeds containing an embryo bearing two 

 seed leaves. Although only those botanists who have made 

 a long and careful study of the willows can be certain of ac- 

 curately separating one kind from another, it is not difficult 

 to learn the general characters of the willow family. The 

 leaves have an alternate arrangement and are generally 

 long, narrow and pointed, with an even margin that is 

 not lobed or deeply cut. The leaf stem is short, and at 

 the point where it is joined to the branch there are two 

 little appendages (stipules) which may be scale-like and fall 

 soon after the leaf expands, 

 or which may resemble small 

 leaves and remain attached 

 until the end of the growing 

 season. The smooth-barked 

 twigs are long, slender and 

 very flexible, swaying in the 

 wind with such light, easy 

 motion that "willowy" has 

 become a synonym for grace- 

 fulness. The buds are cov- 

 ered by a single visible scale 

 that forms a cap over the tiny 

 silk-lined leaves within the 

 bud. Willow wood is soft, 

 light and easily broken. 



AREA OF WILLOW GROWTH 



The flowers are massed together in dense spike-shaped 

 clusters called catkins. They are of two kinds, each borne 

 on separate trees. The pollen-producing flowers consist 

 of two bright yellow stamens (or sometimes three or more) 

 attached to a scale at their bases. The seed-forming 

 flower is a scale bearing a small sac which terminates in a 

 forked tip. The latter is coated with a sticky substance 

 to hold the pollen grains that lodge there to fertilize the 

 minute undeveloped seeds contained in the sac. Nature 

 has designed most flowers of this type to be fertilized by 

 the wind, but in the case of the willows the sticky pollen 



is carried by insects which 

 visit both kinds of flowers 

 in search of nectar. The 

 nectar is exuded from tiny 

 glands near the bases of the 

 scales on which the stamens 

 or the seed sacs are borne. 

 The flowers appear early in 

 the spring, before or with the 

 leaves. In a very short time 

 the seeds are ripe and the 

 small pod, which has devel- 

 oped from the seed sac, 

 splits open and frees a cot- 

 tony mass . This ' ' cotton ' ' 

 is composed of dense tufts 



