which the plant is dried, like S.pentandra.”—His discovery
of such a plant in Britain, could not fail to be a most
interesting circumstance to the Botanists of our country,
and we were highly gratified on receiving native specimens
from Mr. Drummond a few years ago, and on afterwards
being shown the plant by him, growing among rocks on the
Clova mountains.
The plant forms a low shrub, with straggling tortuous
branches, clothed with a brown glabrous and shining bark.
The catkins first appear in April from the extremities of
the branches, or near the extremities, bursting from two
shining chesnut-coloured scales, and are clothed with the
most beautiful long, yellow, soft, and silky hairs that can be
imagined, and then are accompanied by a few young leaves
as soft, as silky, and as yellow as themselves. Male catkins
oblong, an inch and a half or two inches long. Scales
oblong, purplish, enveloped in the silky hairs. Stamens 3,
sometimes 2, with the filaments not unfrequently more or
less combined. Nectary oblong, thick, with a honied
point. Female catkins 2—4 inches long, erect, cylindrical.
Scales and nectary nearly as in the male. Pistil in our
specimens upon a very short pedicel; germen green, quite
glabrous, lanceolate, terminated by a slender yellow style
somewhat more than half its length, and two broadly lanceolate,
yellow, thickened stigmas. As the pistils advance
to maturity, the catkins lose much of their silkiness, and
then the foliage comes to perfection. In general the leaves
are 2—3 inches long and broadly oval; but in shape they
vary exceedingly, being obovate, orbicular, and not unfre-
quently approaching to lanceolate. The margins are quite
entire, never, in our country, even glandular: the surface
is marked with numerous reticulated veins, more or less
clothed with soft shaggy hair, at first yellow, white in age,
sometimes quite glabrous, especially beneath, and then
glaucous : the point generally acute. Stipules oval, entire,
rather large, more or less acute, deciduous.
The Flora Danica S. caprcea, to which Sir J. E. Smith
refers for this plant, has the style cleft and the stigmas bipartite.
In the Salix chrysanthos of that work, there are
two styles to the germen; though in other respects it very
faithfully represents my Lapland specimen of S. lanata, sent
me by Dr. Wikstrom.
Our figures are taken in part from the cultivated plant in
the Chelsea Botanic Garden, originally brought from the
Clova mountains; and in part from wild specimens gathered
there.—W. J. H.