SALICACE^E 



187 



especially along the midribs and slender arcuate primary veins and conspicuous 

 reticulate veinlets, 2'-6' long, I'-l^' wide; their petioles stout, tomentose, ^'-^' long. 

 Flowers: aments oblong-cylindrical, erect, rather lax, often more or less curved, 

 about 1^' long, on short tomentose branchlets, the staminate $' thick and rather 

 thicker than the pistillate; their scales oblong-obovate, yellow, coated with long pale 

 hairs, the staminate rounded above and rather shorter than the more acute scales 

 of the pistillate ament persistent under the fruit; stamens 2, with free elongated 

 glabrous filaments; ovary conical, stalked, with a slender stalk about one third as 

 long as the scale, gradually narrowed above, with a slender elongated bright red 

 style and broad spreading entire stigmas. Fruit oblong-cylindrical, narrowed above, 

 about \' long. 



A tree, occasionally 30 high, with a trunk 1 in diameter, and stout branchlets 

 marked by large scattered orange-colored lenticels, covered during their first 

 season with hoary tomentum and rather bright or dark red-brown and pubescent 

 in their second summer; more often shrubby, with numerous stems 4'-8' thick and 

 15-20 high; frequently a low bush, with straggling almost prostrate stems. Win- 

 ter-buds ovate, acute, nearly terete, dark red, coated with pale pubescence, about 

 ^' long. Bark nearly ^' thick, light red-brown, slightly fissured and divided into 

 closely appressed plate-like scales. Wood light, soft, close-grained, light brown 

 tinged with red, with thin nearly white sapwood. 



Distribution. Borders of salt marshes and ponds and sandy coast dunes; Van- 

 couver Island southward along the shores of Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean to 

 southern Oregon. 



20. Salix Sitchensis, Bong. Willow. 



Leaves conduplicate in the bud, oblong-obovate to oblanceolate, entire or dentate, 

 with remote minute spreading glandular teeth, gradually narrowed and wedge-shaped 

 at the base, acute or acuminate, or rounded and short-pointed, or rounded at the 



apex, when they unfold pubescent or tomentose on the upper surface, and coated 

 on the lower with lustrous white silky pubescence or tomentum persistent during 

 the first season or sometimes deciduous from the leaves of vigorous young shoots, 

 at maturity thin and firm, dark green, lustrous and glabrous above, with the excep- 

 tion of the pubescent midribs, 2'-5' long, f '-!$' wide, with conspicuous slender veins 



