Wayside and Woodland Trees: A pocket guide to the British sylva

by Edward Step

The Sallow (Salix caprea) is the only other species that can properly be considered as a tree, as it attains to a height of thirty feet, though fifteen to twenty feet is a more common measurement. Its usually egg-shaped leaves vary from almost round to elliptical or lance-shaped, and from two to four inches in length. In the typical form, which occurs chiefly in woods, dry pastures, and hedgerows, they are broad, smooth, and dull-green above, covered with soft white down beneath; the stipules half-kidney-shaped. This is the earliest of all our

Willows to flower, and the gold (male) and silver (female) catkins are put out before the leaves. In the country, within a few miles of the larger cities, this can hardly be a desirable species to plant, for on the Sunday before Easter thousands who at no other period exhibit any strong religious tendency journey out to pick some "Palm," as they designate the Sallow bloom, and the rough pruning the Sallows then get must in many cases be disastrous. He who imagines that insect life is suspended until spring is on the verge of summer should visit the woods when the Sallow is in bloom; he will be astonished at the swarms of bees and moths that are collecting the abundant pollen or sipping the nectar provided for them. Before the bright catkins can be seen the locality of the tree may be known by the loud hum produced by hundreds of pairs of wings. The all but invariable rule among the Willows—as among Oaks, Beech, Birch, Hazel, and Pines—is to depend upon the wind for the transfer of pollen from one tree to the stigmas of another of the same species, but in the Sallow we find a breaking away from what was doubtless the primitive arrangement in all flowering plants, by the bribing with honey of more reliable and less wasteful winged carriers.

The Gray Sallow (Salix cinerea) is really a sub-species of S. caprea. It has a liking for moister places than the type, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that its growth in moister situations has brought about the differences by which it is separated from the parent form. These points are, briefly—the buds and twigs are downy, the leaves smaller and proportionately narrower, the upper surface downy, grey-green beneath; the anthers of the male pale yellow, the capsule of the female smaller.

The Eared Sallow (S. aurita) is probably also only another form of S. caprea, distinguished by its small, bushlike proportions (two to four feet high), long branches and red twigs; its small wrinkled leaves, which are usually less than two inches

long, are of an almost oblong shape, downy beneath, and with large ear-shaped stipules. Its likeness is much closer to S. cinerea than to the type; it is fond of damp copses and moist places on heaths, where it may be found at considerable elevations. In the Highlands it ascends to 2000 feet.

There are Willows of dwarf habit, some with long straggling branches and more or less prostrate stems, that grow upon heaths. Each has a name under which it has at some time or other been ranked as a distinct species, just as the forms of Bramble and Rose have been. The differences between them are minute, and of little interest save to the advanced scientific botanist, who with his dried specimens spread before him often detects subtle distinctions not apparent to the outdoor student of the living plant. For the purposes of those for whom this volume is intended they may be regarded as one.

Dwarf Silky Willow (Salix repens). It is a low bush from six to twelve inches high, the stem lying along the ground. Some of the branches straggle in the same fashion, but those which bear the flowers are more or less erect. The leaf-buds and the young leaves are silky, a condition that usually endures on the lower surface, and in some forms on the upper also. They are broadly or narrowly lance-shaped, varying in the different forms alluded to above; in size they range from a half to one and a half inches in length, and may have lance-shaped stipules, or none at all. The scales of the catkins are yellowish-green or purple, with dark tips. After they have shed their pollen the anthers turn black. One form or other of this species will be found in all parts of the British Islands where there are heaths or commons; in the Highlands it occurs as high as 2500 feet.

Another group of small Willows that form bushes (rarely a small tree) have been united under two species—the Dark-leaved Willow (Salix nigricans), and the Tea-leaved Willow

(Salix phylicifolia). None of them occur south of Yorkshire, and the chief distinction between the two species (?) consists in the leaves of S. nigricans turning black when being dried for the herbarium, whilst those of S. phylicifolia do not.