S^i.S'if' 



'^.^ 







PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



Vol,. Ill, pp. 297-362. August 23, 1901, 



PAPERS FROM THE HARRIMAN ALASKA 

 EXPEDITION. 



XXIV. 



THE WILLOWS OF ALASKA. 



[Plates XXXIII-XLII. Text Figures 17-28.] 

 By Frederick V. Coville. 



The Harriman Alaska Expedition of 1899 furnished an op- 

 portunity to observe and collect specimens of most of the willows 

 of the Alaskan coast south of Bering Strait. The species were 

 distinguished in the field without much difficulty, but the labor re- 

 quired to find the correct names of the species was greater, since 

 it involved a careful review of all the literature on the subject 

 and an equally careful examination of all accessible Alaskan 

 collections. It has not been possible to examine the willows 

 collected in that territory by the expeditions of various European 

 nations, and in view of that fact I desire to express here the same 

 hope as did Trautvetter in his admirable treatise De Salicibiis 

 Frigidis published in 1832 : 



Errare quidem humanum est, sed discrimen statuimus inter errores, 

 qui excusari possunt et qui non possunt. . . . Solatio mihi est spes, 

 vos, benevolos lectores, errores raeos in iis numeraturos esse, qui ex- 

 cusari possint. 



Twenty-three species of willows are enumerated in the present 

 paper. Two of these, Salix arbusculoides and Salix myrtilli- 

 folia^ were collected only on the Canadian side of the Alaskan 



Proc. Wash. Acad. Sci., August, 1901. (297) 



