SANDBAR WILLOW. LONG-LEAF WILLOW 



Sali.r tin rid til is Nutt. 



The Wilton Family 



- \i U \( I u. 



Habit and Habitat: A small tree, usually about 20 feet high, with 



a slender trunk 2-3 inches in diameter, although occasionally consider- 

 ably much larger; the Blender, flexible, erect branches form a narrow 

 elongated or round-topped crown; commonly dwarfed to a shrub, 



fort in hight and growing in dense communities. Found on the banks 

 of streams, the borders of lakes and swamps and especially upon the 

 Bandbars, so numerous in our broad, shallow western streams, such as 

 the Missouri and Platte. 



Leaves and Buds: Leaves alternate, simple, linear-lanceolate, often 

 more or less curved, gradually narrowed at both ends, 2-6 inches long, 

 %- l n inch wide, margin with distant, shallow, grandular teeth, soft. 

 silky when young, at maturity thin, smooth, light yellow-green, paler 

 beneath, midrib yellow; petioles grooved, C- 1 , inch long. Muds ovate, 

 narrow, acute, chestnut-brown, about % inch long. 



Flowers and Fruit: Flowers produced in catkins in early summer, 

 Staminate catkins borne by short, stout stalks, cylindrical, soft, pale- 

 silky. LV&-2 inches long, flowering scales entire, light, yellow-green, bear- 

 ing 2 stamens, pistillate catkins about 1 inch long, greenish, crowded, 

 elongating in fruit, ovary oblong, acute, short-stalked, silky. Fruit a 

 dry capsule or pod, light brown, y± inch long, borne in rather crowded 

 catkins, 2-") inches long; seeds tiny, brownish, covered with long, silky 

 hairs. 



Bark, Twigs and Wood: Bark thin, smooth, or shallowly fissured, 

 and more or less fine scaly, often tinged with red. The twigs are slender, 

 fpxible, smooth, gray, light yellow or dark orange or sometimes nur- 

 plish red. The wood is soft and light, close-grained, more or less satiny, 

 weak, brittle, light brown, with lighter colored or often nearly whit* 1 sap- 

 od, used slightly except for light fuel and charcoal. 



Distribution in the State: The sandbar willow is found in prac- 

 tically all parts of Nebraska where there is sufficient moisture in the 

 soil for its development. Its common home is upon the sandbars and 

 islands of various ages in the Missouri and Platte rivers and their 

 tributaries. It is found practically throughout the United States ex- 

 tent on the Atlantic coast and goes far up into northeastern Canada, 

 i 4. 



Remarks: The sandbar willow is the first tree or shrub in all the 

 rthern interior portion of our continent to take root upon newly formed 

 sandbars and sandy banks of streams and lake shores. By holding the 

 sand or mud in place by its extensive, fibrous root-system it is not only 

 able to maintain its own hold upon such treacherous footing but it also 

 omes the natural fore-runner of many other plants which invade 

 such places the easier because of the influence of this pioneer. Prac- 

 tically all of the islands, both great and small in the Platte river haw 

 become permanently established and eventually more or less heavily 

 Wooded because of the influence of this species. These small rod-like 

 often bound together into rip-rap work and so placed as to 

 I the cutting of the river bank by the stream. 



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