340 34 SALIX CAPREA. [CL. XXII. 



bark. The shoots of the present year are commonly dark-- 

 brown and hairy, when they are viewed late in the sum- 

 mer. The leaf-stalks are alternate, strongly ciliated, and even 

 tomentose, from two to four lines in length, with round- 

 ish or lunulate, dentated stipulae at their base ; and in the 

 axillae of the upper leaves are found the buds of the coming 

 year, when they are examined in the middle of summer. 

 The leaves are about three inches long, and half an inch 

 broad ; tapering sHghtly at their base, rapidly at their sum- 

 mit, dentated on the margin, the teeth being bent towards 

 the point. The upper surface is for the most part green, 

 properly, however, not smooth, but partly wrinkled, partly 

 furnished along the nerves and veins with white, soft, short 

 hairs. Hairs also are found on the interstices, when we 

 avail ourselves of the aid of the microscope. The lower sur- 

 face is more or less strongly ciliated ; often it is covered with 

 silky hairs, often also it is shaggy, and even tomentose. 



The male and female flowers appear, in April, in catkins 

 on different trees, on the smooth shoots of the preceding year. 

 Both of these spring from buds, the splendent silky scales of 

 which are persistent, and give a pleasant appearance to tiie 

 flowering, but still leafless tree : both of them, during the 

 time of flowering, are scarcely an inch long, obtuse, and ob- 

 long ; the female flowers afterwards increase to three inches 

 in length. The scales of the male catkins are brown, oblong, 

 and ornamented with long soft hairs. Two filaments, which 

 are longer than the scales, carry quadrilocular yellow an- 

 therae, and have at their base a longish, nearly cylindrical 

 honey-gland. The female flowers have the same scales and 

 glands, and also a petiolated, strongly ciliated germen,the lower 

 part of which is swollen, and crowned with three or four 

 short stigmata. The fruit is a bivalved capsule, having se- 

 veral seeds attached to the inner surface of the valves, and 

 surrounded from the base upwards by long soft hairs. 



Varieties. 



1. This species is not unfrequently found almost quite en- 

 tire, and without perceptible teeth, whence we might be 



