20 
The East Anglian Timber Willow. 
deeply cloven. ” William Scaling (1872) describes it : “With 
silvery tinted foliage, looking like a huge feather spangled with 
silver.” P. J. Selby (1842) says : “ Both sides covered with 
adpressed silky hairs giving the foliage a whitish appearance ; 
the finest of the tree willows.” G. Nicholson ( Gardening 
Dictionary , Vol. III., 1887, page 344) says : “Leaves narrowly 
lanceolate, long-acuminate, silky on both sides, glandular 
serrate ; petiolas eglandular, twigs silky.” 
Brown describes the Salix fragilis thus : “ Leaves ovate 
lanceolate, pointed serrated throughout, very smooth. Foot 
stalks glandular, ovary ovate, nearly sessile. Male flowers with 
an abortive ovary ” ; but he adds : “ The leaves are slightly 
downy when young — like the white willow.” He thinks that 
it is apt to become stag-headed, and that it is known as the 
redwood willow in Scotland owing to the colour of the timber 
when cut up. Scaling says that “this is the only tree that 
should be employed for timber purposes.” Loudon, in his 
“ Arboretum et Fruticetum ” (2nd Edition, Vol. III., page 
1460), writes that “ the redwood willow or stag’s-head osier 
( S . fragilis ), according to Mathew, produces timber superior 
to that of S. alba or of any other tree willow ” ; and he adds 
that “ the wood, when dry, is easily known from that of all 
other willows by its being of a salmon colour,” and that the 
white sap wood, when dry, also becomes the same colour. 
But it seems at the present time that the willow trees in 
East Anglia are either Salix fragilis , which has been called 
S. Russelliana by Sir. J. E. Smith, or the hybrid named 
S. viridis , which has for its parents S. fragilis and S. alba. 
The typical form of S. alba is not found here. 
The S. Russelliana , which is described by Selby (1842) 
as resembling the S. fragilis , “ but later and more airy in 
appearance,” is now regarded by botanists as the same as the 
S. fragilis Linn. It is known by buyers of timber as the “ open 
bark,” and it has a greener and larger leaf, without any of 
the adpressed hairs or silvery under-leaf. This was supposed 
to have been produced by the Duke of Bedford in his Woburn 
Nurseries a century ago, and hence its name. Dr. F. Buchanan 
White, after giving the characteristics of the typical viridis , 
observes that “the hybrid, as met with, more frequently shows 
a departure from these towards fragilis or alba , till it is almost 
impossible to separate it from one or other of these species.” 
As far as I have been able to ascertain, the quantity of S. 
fragilis to be found in the Eastern Counties is very much less 
than that of the S. viridis ; but it must be remembered that 
only about twenty years ago practically no willow r s had been 
planted in England for timber purposes, an apparently sufficient 
supply having been found in isolated trees grown from stumps 
