RUSSELL, OR DUKE OF BEDFORD S WILLOW. 



157 



Footstalks glandular or leafy. Ovary ^ 

 tapering, stalked, longer than the 

 bracteas. Style as long as the 

 stigma. 



The male, according to Dr. John- 

 ston, has the catkins two inches 

 long, on short leafy branchlets, cy- 

 lindrical, yellow, diandrous, the fila- 

 ments not much longer than the 

 pointed, more or less villose scales. 



With a foliage considerably resem- 

 bling that of Sal. fragilis, but lighter 

 and more airy in appearance, the 

 Bedford Willow exhibits, when fully grown, a much freer 

 and finer outline, in consequence of the different or more 

 obtuse angle at which its branches issue from the stem. It 

 is a tree of very rapid growth, nearly equalling in that 

 respect the Sal. alba, and attains in favourable soils a size 

 superior to that of Sal. fragilis. Of the specimens mention- 

 ed by authors, the favourite tree of Dr. Johnson, belonging 

 to this species and growing near Lichfield, appears to have 

 been one of the largest, and in 1812, a few months pre- 

 vious to the first injuries it received from the elements, 

 its dimensions were as follow : girth at six feet from the 

 ground twenty-one feet, the length of the stem below 

 the ramification which formed the enormous head, twenty 

 feet ; three years afterwards it had lost the greater part 

 of its boughs, and in 1829 it was blown down by a violent 

 storm, which took place on the 29th of the April of that 

 year. We lately measured a tree of this species growing 

 at Dunstan Hill, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, ten feet in 

 circumference at the base ; but the length of the stem 

 is not more than eight feet, at which height three or four 



