BEBB WILLOW 



Mexico. It grows on the river banks and is the first tree or 

 shrub in all the northern interior region to spring up on 

 newly formed sand-bars and banks of rivers, holding the soft 

 mud in place with its long rigid roots. It is the herald of 

 the poplars and prepares the river banks for their growth. 

 It is an exceedingly valuable tree throughout the entire mid- 

 continental region. 



BEBB WILLOW 



S&lix bebbicLna. Scilix rostrhta. 



A bushy tree sometimes twenty feet high usually much smaller, 

 frequently a shrub. The bark is reddish or olive green or gray 

 tinged with red. Branchlets slender, reddish purple, orange brown 

 or reddish brown. 



Leaves. Come out of the bud conduplicate, are oblong-obovate, 

 wedge-shaped or rounded at base, remotely serrate or entire, acute 

 or acuminate. When full grown they are thick dull green and 

 smooth above, pale blue, or silvery white, downy below; one to 

 three inches long, half an inch to an inch wide. Petioles are often 

 reddish ; stipules leaf-like, semicordate, acute, sometimes one-half 

 an inch long, deciduous. 



Flowers. Catkins appear with the unfolding leaves, erect and 

 terminal on short leafy branches. The staminate catkins are sil- 

 very white before flowering and pale yellow after, about an inch 

 long and half an inch broad. Pistillate catkins are about an inch 

 long. Stamens two, filaments free. Ovary very silky, crowned with 

 spreading yellow stigmas. 



Fruit. Capsule, elongated, narrowed into a long slender beak, 

 borne on a slender stalk which is longer than the persistent scale. 



The Bebb AVillow will grow in moist and in dry soil, on the 

 borders of streams and on dry hillsides. It is more abundant 

 in British America than in the United States where it ranges 

 southwest to Pennsylvania and westward to Minnesota. It 

 has appeared, heretofore, in the books as S. rostrata, but the 

 name has been changed to S. bebbiana, to commemorate the 

 labors of Mr. Michael S. Bebb who was an authority upon 

 the willows of this country. 



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