A tree, rarely more than 30° high, with a trunk 12′—15′ in diameter, slender erect and spreading branches often pendulous at the ends, forming a broad round-topped head, and slender glabrous branchlets marked with occasional pale lenticels, light yellow, becoming light or dark red-brown and lustrous, and paler orange-brown in their second year. Winter-buds narrowly ovoid, long-pointed, more or less falcate, bright red-brown, lustrous, ¼′ long. Bark ½′—¾′ thick, dark brown or nearly black, and deeply divided by narrow fissures into broad flat ridges separating on the surface into closely appressed scales.
Distribution. Banks of streams in the cañons of the mountains of central and southern Arizona (Sicamore Cañon near Flagstaff and Sabino Cañon, Santa Catalina Mountains); and southwestern New Mexico (cañon, Saint Louis Mountains, Grant County); in Chihuahua, Sonora and Lower California.
The typical S. Bonplandiana H. B. K. with broader and more coarsely serrate leaves, and flower-aments appearing from July to January from the axils of mature leaves is widely distributed in Mexico and ranges to Guatemala.
6. [Salix lævigata] Bebb. Red Willow.
Leaves obovate, narrowed and rounded or acute and mucronate at apex, cuneate at base, with slightly revolute obscurely serrate margins, on sterile branches lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, acute or acuminate, when they unfold light blue-green and coated on the lower surface with long pale or tawny deciduous hairs, at maturity glabrous, dark blue-green and lustrous above, paler and glaucous below, 3′—7′ long, ¾′—1½′ wide, with a broad flat yellow midrib; petioles broad, grooved, puberulous, rarely ½′ long; stipules ovate, acute, finely serrate, usually small and caducous. Flowers: aments cylindric, slender, lax, elongated, 2′—4′ long, on leafy branchlets; scales peltate, dentate at apex, covered with long pale hairs, the staminate obovate, rounded, the pistillate narrower and more or less truncate; stamens usually 5 or 6, with free filaments hairy at the base; ovary conic, acute, rounded below, short-stalked, glabrous, with broad spreading emarginate stigmatic lobes. Fruit elongated, conic, long-stalked, nearly ¼′ in length.
A tree, 40°—50° high, with a straight trunk 2° in diameter, slender spreading branches, and slender light or dark orange-colored or bright red-brown glabrous, or in one form tomentose or villose (f. araquipa Jeps.) branchlets; often much smaller, with an average height of 20°—30°. Winter-buds ovoid, somewhat obtuse, pale chestnut-brown, ⅛′—¼′ long. Bark ¾′—1′ thick, dark brown slightly tinged with red and deeply divided into irregular connected flat ridges broken on the surface into thick closely appressed scales. Wood light, soft, light brown tinged with red, with thick nearly white sapwood.
Distribution. Banks of streams; western California from the Oregon boundary to the southern borders of the state, ascending to altitudes of 4500° on the western slopes of the southern Sierra Nevada, and eastward to Mohave and Yavapai Counties, Arizona, southeastern Nevada and southwestern Utah.
7. [Salix longipes] Shuttl.
Salix amphibia Small.