DECIDUOUS TREES. 
389 
enliven or vary the more common tree outlines more perfectly than 
most other trees. 
The Ring Willow. Salix annularis . — This is only a variety 
of the weeping willow, curious on account of the leaf curling in the 
form of a ring. Portions of these trees occasionally return to the 
natural form of leaf, so that the simple form and the curled leaf are 
both growing on the same tree. It does not make so beautiful a 
large tree as the common sort, and is scarcely worth planting. 
The Golden Willow. Salix vitellma. — A tree but little 
smaller than the weeping willow, with similar leaves and tone of 
foliage, but without its perfectly pendulous habit. Its peculiarity, 
and one which makes it a marked, and often a beautiful tree, is the 
golden color of its young wood. When the tree is clothed with 
leaves, the yellow twigs seen through them give additional warmth 
of tone to their color, and when bare of leaves makes a bright and 
cheerful winter tree. It is irregularly round-headed in outline, and 
less broad in proportion than the weeping willow. The lights and 
shades in its head are softly blended, and the lightness and warm 
color of its foliage contrast well with trees having dark foliage or 
abrupt shadows. There is a beautiful specimen on the west side 
of the Mall in the New York Central Park, 
The White Willow, Salix alba^ and the Russell or Bedford 
Willow, S. Russelliana^ are both English varieties long domesti- 
cated in this country. They become large trees with great rapidity 
— attaining a height of sixty or seventy feet in thirty years. With 
the exception of the color of the bark they have the same general 
characteristics as the golden willow. 
The Glossy-leaved Willow, S. lucida^ is a native shrub of 
considerable beauty, described by Gray in the Natural History of 
New York as “ a shrub eight to fifteen feet high, with shining yel- 
lowish-brown bark. Buds yellowish, smooth. Leaves three to five 
inches long, and an inch or more in width, rather obtuse when 
young, but tapering at maturity to a long slender point, and rather 
acute at the base. A very handsome willow.” 
