PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
343 
Willow is an old English word, but the more common and 
perhaps the older name for the Willow is Withy, a name 
which is still in constant use, but more generally applied to 
the twigs when cut for basket-making than to the living tree. 
“Withe” is found in the oldest vocabularies, but we do not 
find “ Willow ” till we come to the vocabularies of the fifteenth 
century, when it occurs as “Haec Salex, A c Wyllo-tre;” 
“ Hsec Salix-icis, a Welogh“Salix, Welig.” Both the names 
probably referred to the pliability of the tree, and there was 
another name for it, the Sallow, which was either a corruption 
of the Latin Salix, or was derived from a common root. It 
was also called Osier. 
The Willow is a native of Britain. It belongs to a large 
family ( Salix ), numbering 160 species, of which we have 
seventeen distinct species in Great Britain, besides many sub¬ 
species and varieties. So common a plant, with the peculiar 
pliability of the shoots that distinguishes all the family, was 
sure to be made much use of. Its more common uses were 
for basket-making, for coracles, and huts, or “Willow-cabins” 
(No. i), but it had other uses in the elegancies and even in 
the romance of life. The flowers of the early Willow (S. cap 7 'ea ) 
did duty for and were called Palms on Palm Sunday (see 
Palm), and not only the flowers but the branches also seem 
to have been used in decoration, a use which is now extinct, 
“The Willow is called Salix , and hath his name a saliendo , 
for that it quicklie groweth up, and soon becommeth a tree. 
Heerewith do they in some countries trim up their parlours 
and dining roomes in sommer, and sticke fresh greene leaves 
thereof about their beds for coolness.”— Newton’s Herball for 
the Bible d 
But if we only look at the poetry of the time of Shakespeare,, 
and much of the poetry before and after him, we should almost 
conclude that the sole use of the Willow was to weave garlands 
1 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Willow does not appear 
to have had any value for its medical uses. In the present day salicine 
and salicylic acid are produced from the bark, and have a high reputation 
as antiseptics and in rheumatic cases. 
