Botanical Variations of the Willow. 21 
and sets put in by farmers for fencing or other ordinary 
purposes. In other parts of England on the contrary the S. 
fragilis is almost universal. 
The Rev. E. F. Linton, of Edmondsham, Salisbury, a careful 
and critical botanist who has devoted much attention to the 
willows, and who has been good enough to interest himself in 
this matter, describes a large number of my East Anglian 
samples as Salix viridis with a strong leaning towards S. alba 
and some signs of fragilis , or with an equal proportion of 
Salix alba and Salix fragilis. He looks upon the Salix 
viridis as a very variable hybrid, and he agrees “ that the pure 
Salix alba type is very rare in Britain, almost all our white 
willow falling under the variety ccerulea , which is however 
a very slight variety, with leaves less silky and may be just the 
set of a cooler climate.” 
This Salix viridis seems to be the hybrid plant which is now 
called, apparently wrongly, the Huntingdon or white willow, 
used by cricket bat makers and called by them the “ close 
bark,” or “ right sort.” This willow in its leaf resembles the 
Salix alba in shape, but is of an olive-green, and like the variety 
ccerulea , but with shorter adpressed hairs. Where it differs 
most distinctly from the Salix alba as grown at Kew and at 
the Cambridge Botanical Gardens is that the winter shoots are 
of a bronze-red instead of a green colour. This is sometimes 
held to represent the difference of sex. The tree is in the 
Eastern Counties generally called the red willow, owing to 
these red shoots and to the red colour of the heart wood, and 
considerable confusion has resulted from this mistake. 
It certainly seems strange that the twigs of a specifically 
defined tree should vary in colour to so great an extent, and 
Loudon, who seems to have searched for facts rather than 
transcribe the books of others, writes at some length as to the 
influence of sex upon the colour of the willow. Referring to 
the East Anglian willow, he wrote (. Arboretum , Yol. III., page 
1524) : — 
In the parish of Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, there are numerous trees of 
S. alba , the vigorous shoots and branches of which, and especially those of 
pollard trees, have red bark, which, when the trees are leafless in winter, are 
very conspicuous. This appears to be the upland, or red-twigged willow of 
Pontey 1 ; but it may possibly be only a variation of the species, or the female. 
He also (page 1523) quoted an observation of Sir J. E. 
Smith as follows : — 
The late Mr. Crowe, who found the female plant wild in Suffolk, was of 
opinion that this might be taken for S. alba in many parts of England, the 
real one not being known in some of the Northern Counties. He had for many 
1 William Pontey, ornamental gardener, &c., to successive Dukes of Bedford; 
author of The Forest Pruner (1805) and The Profitable Planter (1809). He 
wrote on the red-twigged willow in The Forest Pruner (page 79). 
