willow

Description:

The tree (after felling can take the form of a shrub) is 20-30 m high, with a tent-like or wide-round, often weeping crown, a trunk up to 3 m in diameter, covered with dark gray deeply fissured bark. Young shoots are olive-green or red-brown, silvery-fluffy at the ends. Older shoots are glabrous, flexible, unbreakable. The lower branches often bent down to the ground. The buds are lanceolate, reddish-yellow, silky, flattened, with clearly visible lateral carinae, sharp, 6 mm long, about 1.5 mm wide. Leaves are alternate, narrow-lanceolate or lanceolate, finely serrate or whole-edged, with a pointed apex, 5-15 cm long, 1-3 cm wide, whitish when blooming, covered with pressed silvery hairs; later - dark green above, naked, below silvery, pubescent. Stipules small, narrow-lanceolate, glandular, early falling, silvery-fluffy. Petiole 0.2-1 cm long, with one pair of glands near the base of the plates. The flowers are collected in loose, cylindrical, rather thick catkins 3-5 cm long. Bracts are yellowish or greenish, concave, hairy at the base, early falling off in female flowers. It blooms in April - May at the same time as the leaves open. Fruits are capsules 4-6 mm long, with legs up to 1 mm long. Seeds ripen in May - June four to five weeks after flowering, are carried by the wind.

Habitat:

he species range is Europe (except for the Far North), Western Siberia, Asia Minor, Iran, Kazakhstan. White willow naturalized in North America and Central Asia. A common tree in Central Russia. Grows on floodplains, along the banks of rivers, irrigation ditches, ponds and reservoirs, on dams, embankments, slopes, along roads and near dwellings in settlements; often forms rather large groves stretching along rivers for many kilometers. In the mountains it rises to almost 2000 m