174 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



at the base, $' long. Bark $'-f ' thick, dark brown slightly tinged with red and 

 divided by shallow fissures into broad flat scaly ridges broken by cross fissures into 

 oblong plates. Wood light, soft, brittle, light brown, with lighter colored or often 

 nearly white sapwood. 



Distribution. River banks and the shores of lakes; California west of the Sierra 

 Nevada; in western Oregon, Washington, and southern British Columbia often re- 

 placed by the var. Lyallii, Sarg., with leaves tapering from a rounded or subcordate 

 base, usually white below and often 7'-8' long, more glandular petioles, and narrow 

 and less hairy scales of the pistillate ament, and in western Oregon and Washington 

 one of the commonest trees on river banks, with tall clustered stems ; in the interior 

 from the sierras of northern California to northern Montana, Colorado, and northern 



New Mexico by the var. caudata, Sudw., with smaller thicker and more coriaceous 

 often more or less falcate leaves, wedge-shaped at the base, green above and below, 

 with thicker and more densely flowered staminate aments, yellow branchlets, and 

 larger often villous winter-buds. 



7. Salix lucida, Muehl. Shining Willow. 



Leaves involute in the bud, lanceolate, gradually or abruptly narrowed and 

 wedge-shaped or rounded at the base, acute at the apex, with long tapering points, 

 finely serrate, 3'-5' long, !'-!' wide, covered when they unfold with scattered pale 

 caducous hairs, at maturity coriaceous, smooth and lustrous, dark green above, paler 

 below, with broad yellow midribs, and slender primary veins arcuate and united near 

 the margins; their petioles stout, yellow, puberulous, glandular at the apex, with 

 several dark or yellow conspicuous glands, \'-\' long ; stipules nearly semicircular, 

 glandular-serrate, membranaceous, \'~^' broad, often persistent during the summer. 

 Flowers: aments erect, tomentose, on stout puberulous peduncles terminal on short 

 leafy branches, the staminate oblong-cylindrical, densely flowered, about !' broad, 

 the pistillate slender, elongated, l^'-2' long, often persistent until late in the season; 

 their scales oblong or obovate, rounded, entire, erose or dentate at the apex, light 

 yellow, nearly glabrous or coated on the back with pale hairs, often ciliate on the 

 margins; stamens usually 5, with elongated free filaments slightly hairy at the base; 



