312 COVILLE 



wool or felt made up of curled and tangled hairs, presenting an appear- 

 ance quite different from the velvety, or satiny, or cobwebby pubes- 

 cence of other species. The leaves are narrowly to broadly elliptical- 

 lanceolate, acute at the apex and base, smooth or nearly so on the 

 upper surface, of an apparently thick texture, due largely to the dense 

 woolly covering of the lower surface, often corrugate-reticulate, the 

 margins of the very young leaves often minutely glandular-denticulate, 

 at maturity usually entire and sometimes revolute, the stipules usually 

 present, narrowly linear-lanceolate to filiform, and entire. The fruit- 

 ing catkins are very long and thick, some of those collected reaching 

 a length of 14 cm. and a diameter of 1.8 cm. The stout twigs are 

 either smooth or densely hairy, and sometimes they have a decidedly 

 blue color from the presence of a conspicuous bloom. 



Salix alaxensis extends from the northern part of Alexander 

 Archipelago westward along the Alaskan coast to the peninsula, 

 northward along the eastern side of Bering Sea through Bering Strait 

 to Cape Lisburne, and through the interior of Alaska to the Mackenzie 

 River in British America. East of Kadiak it is associated with other 

 species of tree willows, but west of that point it is the only willow 

 that presents the form and dimensions of a tree. From the Shumagin 

 Islands eastward full-grown specimens are ordinarily about 20 to 30 

 feet (6 to 9 meters) in height, with a trunk four to six inches (10 to 

 15 cm.) in diameter. Under suitable conditions it doubtless reaches a 

 still larger size. On the wind-swept Aleutian Islands, like all other 

 arboreal vegetation, it appears to be wanting, but on the mainland 

 to the north it again appears, on Buckland River, at the eastern end 

 of Kotzebue Sound, reaching a height of 16 to 20 feet (according to 

 Seemann in the 'Botany of the Herald'), farther north in the sound 

 only eight feet, and at its northern limit. Cape Lisburne, being reduced 

 to a shrub only two feet high. Like Salix sitchensis^ it becomes 

 almost prostrate on the naked gravels at Muir Glacier, while only a 

 few miles away, on older glacial deposits which have been reclothed 

 with an abundant vegetation of shrubs, it develops into a handsome 

 small tree, a difference of habit illustrating the marked effect of 

 different local conditions. 



The original specimens of Hooker and Arnott's speciosa came from 

 Kotzebue Sound, those of Andersson's speciosa alaxensis from "Alaxa 

 Americae occidentali-borealis." 



The feltleaf willow holds an important economic relation to the 

 mining industry and to human existence generally in northern Alaska, 

 for while spruce timber apparently does not extend north of the divide 



