SALIC ACE,E 119 



V. SALICACEJE. 



Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, alternate simple stalked deciduous leaves with stip- 

 ules, soft light usually pale wood, astringent bark, scaly buds, and often stoloniferous roots. 

 Flowers appearing in early spring usually before the leaves, solitary in the axils of the scales 

 of unisexual aments from buds in the axils of leaves of the previous year, the male and 

 female on different plants; perianth 0; stamens 1, 2 or many, their anthers introrse, 2-celled, 

 the cells opening longitudinally; styles usually short or none; stigmas 2-4, often 2-lobed. 

 Fruit a 1-celled 2-4-valved capsule, with 2-4 placentas bearing below their middle numer- 

 ous ascending anatropous seeds without albumen and surrounded by tufts of long white 

 silky hairs attached to the short stalks of the seeds and deciduous with them; embryo 

 straight, filling the cavity of the seed; cotyledons flattened, much longer than the short 

 radicle turned toward the minute hilum. 



The two genera of this family are widely scattered but most abundant in the northern 

 hemisphere, with many species, and are often conspicuous features of vegetation. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE GENERA. 



Scales of the aments laciniate; flowers surrounded by a cup-shaped often oblique disk; 



stamens numerous; buds with numerous scales. 1. Populus. 



Scales of the aments entire; disk a minute gland-like body; stamens 1, 2 or many; buds with 



a single scale. 2. Salix. 



1. POPULUS L. Poplar. 



Large fast-growing trees, with pale furrowed bark, terete or angled branchlets, resinous 

 winter-buds covered by several thin scales, those of the first pair small and opposite, the 

 others imbricated, increasing in size from below upward, accrescent and marking the base 

 of the branchlet with persistent ring-like scars, and thick roots. Leaves involute in the 

 bud, usually ovate or ovate-lanceolate, entire, dentate with usually glandular teeth, or 

 lobed, penni veined, turning yellow in the autumn; petioles long, often laterally com- 

 pressed, sometimes furnished at the apex on the upper side with 2 nectariferous glands, 

 leaving in falling oblong often obcordate, elliptic, arcuate, or shield-shaped leaf-scars 

 displaying the ends of 3 nearly equidistant fibre- vascular bundles; stipules caducous, those 

 of the first leaves resembling the bud-scales, smaller higher on the branch, and linear- 

 lanceolate and scarious on the last leaves. Flowers in pendulous stalked aments, the pis- 

 tillate lengthening and rarely becoming erect before maturity; scales obovate, gradually 

 narrowed into slender stipes, dilated and lobed, palmately cleft or fimbriate at apex, mem- 

 branaceous, glabrous or villose, more crowded on the staminate than on the pistillate 

 ament, usually caducous; disk of the flower broadly cup-shaped, often oblique/ entire, 

 dentate or irregularly lobed, fleshy or membranaceous, stipitate, usually persistent under 

 the fruit; stamens 4-12 or 12-60 or more, inserted on the disk, their filaments free, short, 

 light yellow; anthers ovoid or oblong, purple or red; ovary sessile in the bottom of the disk, 

 oblong-conical, sub-globose or ovoid-oblong, cylindric or slightly lobed, with 2 or 3 or 

 rarely 4 placentas; styles usually short; stigmas as many as the placentas, divided into fili- 

 form lobes or broad, dilated, 2-parted or lobed. Fruit ripening before the full growth of 

 the leaves, greenish, reddish brown, or buff color, oblong-conic, subglobose or ovoid-oblong, 

 separating at maturity into 2-4 recurved valves. Seeds broadly obovoid or ovoid, rounded 

 or acute at the apex, light chestnut-brown; cotyledons elliptic. 



Populus in the extreme north often forms great forests, and is common on the alluvial 

 bottom-lands of streams and on high mountain slopes, ranging from the Arctic Circle to 

 northern Mexico and Lower California and from the Atlantic to the Pacific in the New 

 World, and to northern Africa, the southern slopes of the Himalayas, central China, and 



