160 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



oblong-obovate, dark reddish brown toward the apex, covered on the back with long silky 

 silvery white hairs; stamens 2, with elongated glabrous filaments; ovary oblong-cylindric, 

 narrowed above the middle, villose, with a short distinct style and broad spreading entire 

 stigmas; pedicel glabrous, about twice the length of the scale. Fruit cylindric, more or 

 less contracted above the middle, long-pointed, light brown, coated with pale pubescence. 

 A tree, rarely more than 25 high, with a trunk about 1 in diameter, stout ascending 



Fig. 155 



branches forming an open round-topped head, and stout branchlets marked by occasional 

 orange-colored lenticels, dark reddish purple and coated at first with pale deciduous pubes- 

 cence; more often shrubby, with numerous tall straggling stems. Winter-buds semiterete, 

 flattened and acute at the apex, about f ' long, dark reddish purple and lustrous. Bark |' 

 thick, light brown tinged with red, and divided by shallow fissures into thin plate-like 

 oblong scales. Wood light, soft, close-grained, brown streaked with red, with lighter 

 brown sap wood. 



Distribution. Moist meadows and the banks of streams and lakes; Nova Scotia to 

 Manitoba, and southward to Delaware, southern Indiana and Illinois, eastern and south- 

 western Iowa, the Black Hills of South Dakota, and northeastern Missouri; common. 



A form of Salix discolor with more densely flowered and more silvery pubescent aments 

 is described as var. eriocephala Schn. and a form w r ith loosely flowered aments with less 

 tomentose fruits with longer styles and with narrower leaves as var. prinoides Schn. 



22. Salix Scouleriana Barr. Black Willow. 

 Salix Nuttallii Sarg. 



Leaves oblong-obovate to elliptic, acute or abruptly acuminate with a short or long- 

 pointed apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate at the often unsymmetrical base, entire or 

 remotely and irregularly crenately serrate, thin and firm, dark yellow-green and lustrous 

 above, pale or glaucous and glabrous or pilose below, 1 J'-4' long, |'-1|' wide, with a broad 

 yellow pubescent midrib and slender veins forked and arcuate within the slightly thickened 

 and revoiute margins and connected by conspicuous reticulate veinlets; petioles slender, 

 puberulous, \'-\' in length; stipules foliaceous, semilunar, glandular-serrate, \'-\' long, ca- 

 ducous. Flowers: aments appearing before the leaves, oblong-cylindric, erect, nearly sessile 

 on short tomentose scale-bearing branchlets, the staminate about 1' long and rather more 

 than \' thick, the pistillate \\' long, about tV thick; scales oblong, narrowed at the ends, 

 dark-colored, covered with long white hairs, persistent under the fruit; stamens 2, with free 



