more pointed, and frequently so widened above the middle
as to be somewhat rhomboidal, free from pubescence in
every stage of growth, except on the upper side of the leafstalk.
On strong young shoots the leaves grow twice as
arge, and take an elliptic-oblong outline, with rather
stronger serratures. Stipules small, ovate or half-cordate,
mostly concave, the edges and disk glandulose. Catkins
about an inch long when in flower, on thick, hairy stalks,
with a few small ovate, or rounder, slightly serrulate, blunt-
ish, reflexed floral leaves, naked and shining above, and
silky beneath, which soon fall off. Flowprs loosely set.
Calyx-scale oblong, concave, mostly rounded, silky; the
upper half black. Nectary interior, short, linear, truncate,
pale. Germen rounded and bulging at the base, contracted
in the middle, and again rather enlarged towards the somewhat
blunt apex; the lower part naked, green, the upper
beset with white appressed shining hairs; its stalk about
half as long as the calyx-scale, and twice the length of the
nectary, naked, or more or less hairy, and often varying in
this respect in the same catkin. Style half as long as the
germen, naked. Stigmas scarcely so long as the style,
deeply cleft into spreading linear segments, pale, soon
turning brown. Male plant unknown.
This Willow resembles Si laurina (the S. bicolor of English
Botany and of Salictum Woburnense,) in the figure of
the leaves; but that plant differs by its more acute-angled
ramification; its mahogany-coloured twigs, densely cottony
while young; the abundance of short appressed hairs on
both surfaces of the young leaves ; the more subulate germen,
white all over with cottony hairs; and the shorter style,
with short stigmas, the segments of which usually adhere
together.—W. B.