Order 104. SALICÀCEÆ. (Willow Family.)
Diœcious trees or shrubs, with both kinds of flowers in catkins, one to each bract, without perianth; the fruit a 1-celled and 2–4-valved pod, with 2–4 parietal or basal placentæ, bearing numerous seeds furnished with long silky down.—Style usually short or none; stigmas 2, often 2-lobed. Seeds ascending, anatropous, without albumen. Cotyledons flattened.—Leaves alternate, undivided, with scale-like and deciduous, or else leaf-like and persistent, stipules. Wood soft and light; bark bitter.
1. Salix. Bracts entire. Flowers with small glands, disks none. Stamens few. Stigmas short. Buds with a single scale.
2. Populus. Bracts lacerate. Flowers with a broad or cup-shaped disk. Stamens numerous. Stigmas elongated. Buds scaly.
1. SÀLIX, Tourn. Willow. Osier. (By M. S. Bebb, Esq.)
Bracts (scales) of the catkins entire. Sterile flowers of 3–10, mostly 2, distinct or united stamens, accompanied by 1 or 2 small glands. Fertile flowers also with a small flat gland at the base of the ovary; stigmas short.—Trees or shrubs, generally growing along streams, with terete and lithe branches. Leaves mostly long and pointed, entire or glandularly toothed. Buds covered by a single scale, with an inner adherent membrane (separating in n. 14). Catkins appearing before or with the leaves. (The classical Latin name.)
§ 1. Aments borne on short lateral leafy branchlets; scales yellowish, falling before the capsules mature; filaments hairy below, all free; style very short or obsolete; stigmas thick, notched. Trees or large shrubs; leaves taper-pointed.
[*] Leaves closely serrate with inflexed teeth; capsules glabrous.
[+] Stamens 3–5 or more.
[++] Trees 15–50° high, with rough bark and slender twigs; no petiolar glands; sterile aments elongated, narrowly cylindrical; flowers somewhat remotely subverticillate; scales entire, short and rounded, crisp-villous on the inside.