Distribution. Borders of salt marshes and ponds and sandy coast dunes; Vancouver Island southward along the shores of Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean to southern Oregon.
24. [Salix sitchensis] Sanson.
Leaves oblong-obovate to oblanceolate, entire or minutely glandular dentate, acute or acuminate, or rounded and short-pointed, or rounded at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate at base, when they unfold pubescent or tomentose on the upper surface, and coated on the lower with lustrous white silky pubescence or tomentum persistent during the season or sometimes deciduous from the leaves of vigorous young shoots, at maturity thin and firm, dark green, lustrous and glabrous above, with the exception of the pubescent midrib, 2′—5′ long, ¾′—1½′ wide, with conspicuous slender veins arcuate and united within the margins and prominent reticulate veinlets; petioles stout, pubescent, rarely ½′ long; stipules rarely produced, foliaceous, semilunar, acute or rounded at apex, glandular-dentate, coated below with hoary tomentum, often ½′ long, caducous. Flowers: aments cylindric, densely flowered, erect on short tomentose leafy branchlets, the staminate 1½′—2′ long and ½′ thick, the pistillate 2½′—3′ long, and ¼′ thick; scales yellow or tawny, the staminate oblong-obovate, rounded at the apex, covered with long white hairs, much longer than the more acute pubescent scales of the pistillate ament; stamen 1, with an elongated glabrous filament, or very rarely 2, with filaments united below the middle or nearly to the apex; ovary short-stalked, ovoid, conic, acute, pubescent and gradually narrowed into the elongated style, with entire or slightly emarginate short stigmas. Fruit ovoid, narrowed above, light red-brown, pubescent about ¼′ long.
A much-branched tree, occasionally 25°—30° high, with a short contorted often inclining trunk sometimes 1° in diameter, and slender brittle branchlets coated at first with hoary tomentum, pubescent and tomentose and dark red-brown or orange color during their first winter, becoming darker, pubescent or glabrous, and sometimes covered with a glaucous bloom in their second season; more often shrubby and 6°—15° tall. Winter-buds acute, nearly terete, light red-brown, pubescent or puberulous, about ¼′ long. Bark about ⅛′ thick and broken into irregular closely appressed dark brown scales tinged with red. Wood light, soft, close-grained, pale red, with thick nearly white sapwood.
Distribution. Banks of streams and in low moist ground; Cook Inlet and Kadiak Island, Alaska, southward in the neighborhood of the coast to Santa Barbara, California; on the Marble Creek of the Kaweah River at 6900° altitude (f. Ralphiana Jeps.)
VI. MYRICACEÆ.
Aromatic resinous trees and shrubs, with watery juice, terete branches, and small scaly buds. Leaves alternate, revolute in the bud, serrate, resinous-punctate, persistent in our species, in falling leaving elevated semiorbicular leaf-scars showing the ends of three nearly equidistant fibro-vascular bundles. Flowers unisexual, diœcious or monœcious, usually subtended by minute bractlets, in the axils of the deciduous scales of unisexual or androgynous simple oblong aments from buds in the axils of the leaves of the year, opening in early spring, the staminate below the pistillate in androgynous aments; staminate, perianth 0; stamens 4 or many, inserted on the thickened base of the scales of the ament; filaments slender, united at the base into a short stipe; anthers ovoid, erect, 2-celled, introrse, opening longitudinally; ovary rudimentary or 0; pistillate flowers single or in pairs; ovary sessile, 1-celled; styles short, divided into 2 elongated filiform stigmas stigmatic on the inner face; ovule solitary, erect from the base of the cell, orthotropous, the micropyle superior. Fruit a globose or ovoid dry drupe usually covered with waxy exudations; nut hard, thick-walled. Seed erect, with a thin coat, without albumen; embryo straight; cotyledons plano-convex, fleshy; radicle short, superior, turned away from the minute basal hilum.
The family consists of the genus Myrica L., of about thirty or forty species of small trees and shrubs, widely distributed through the temperate and warmer parts of both hemispheres. Of the seven North American species three are trees. Wax is obtained from the exudations of the fruit of several species. The bark is astringent, and sometimes used in medicine, in tanning, and as an aniline dye. Myrica rubra Sieb and Zacc., of southern Japan and China, is cultivated for its succulent aromatic red fruit.
The generic name is probably from the ancient name of some shrub, possibly the Tamarisk.