GOLDEN OSIER: CRACK WILLOW 249 



like projecting leaf-bases, the tips sometimes re-curved. 

 There is no other species thus pruinose purple. 



-r -f- Twigs devoid of waxy bloom and 

 bright yellow inner cortex. 



8 Twigs golden yellow, smooth and 

 polished, except at the slightly 

 silky tips ; buds elongated, small, 

 appressed and flat, slightly silky. 



S. alba, var. vitellina. Golden Osier. A cultivated 

 Osier. Shoots silky, as are the young bads. Older 

 twigs passing to orange. In other respects resembling 

 its parent form, S. alba, p. 253. 



8 8 Twigs not bright yellow. 



A Buds and twigs smooth; the 

 latter easily snapping across 

 just above the articulation, else- 

 where tough and supple. 



S. fragilis, L. Crack Willow (Fig. 130). Buds tri- 

 angular to long-ovoid, pointed, smooth, flat, reddish or 

 with a violet hue to deep brown or nearly black, slightly 

 keeled, more or less appressed, the nearly black-brown 

 scales being greenish brown at the base and glabrous. 

 Twigs glabrous, slender, more or less angular, red and 

 green, or somewhat orange, when young passing to grey- 

 yellow, olive, or purple-brown. 



S. Russelliana, Sm., is a form with even more orange- 

 coloured twigs, and the same violet-hued buds, but does 

 not snap at the joints. 



S. triandra, the Almond Willow (Fig. 131), has the 

 same peculiarity of snapping above the articulation, but 

 less easily, at any rate in some forms e.g. var. decipiens, 



