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 
Salix bebbidna. Salix rostrata, 
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 Willow 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. vostrafa, but the 
name has been changed to S. debbiana, to commemorate the 
labors of Mr. Michael S. Bebb who was an authority upon 
the willows of this country. 
4o1 
