stamens reversed. S. pentandra is figured in such a state in
English Botany, t. 1805; and a tree exists in a plantation at
Henfield in which the flowers are so arranged, and which
seems to differ in no other respect from our male S. cuspidata,
except that the leaves are smaller, and all its parts more
slender.
Fries (Nov. Suec. Mant. 1. p. 41) and Koch, on his authority,
have regarded S . cuspidata as the same with S. tetrandra,
Linn.: but Anderson (Sal. Lapp. p. 16) is of opinion that S.
cuspidata is a distinct species, and S. tetrandra but a variety
(as Fries also held it) of S. pentandra.
We learn that Wimmer, in “ Flora von Schlesien” (another
work that we have not seen), gives our plant as a hybrid of
S. pentandra and S. fragilis. We cannot disprove this
opinion: but if hybrid Willows are so easily produced, so
often fertile, and so capable of perpetuating their own forms,
as the report of the experiments of M. Wichura at Breslau,
translated from the original German in Dr. F. Schultz’s
Archives de Flore (ann. 1855),pp. 91 et seq., seems to prove,
the “ gift of scientific divination” (the term is Wichura’s) is
indeed needful for determining the species and their products.
—W. B.