Western Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Salix amygdaloides Anderss.
- Family: Willow (Salicaceae)
- Flowering: April-May
- Field Marks: This species is distinguished by its paler lower leaf surface, its leaves usually about 1/3 as broad as long, the absence of glands on its leaf stalks, and often the presence of heart-shaped stipules.
- Habitat: Along streams, around lakes and ponds, floodplain woods, wet ditches.
- Habit: Tree up to 50 feet tall.
- Bark: Grayish brown, shallowly furrowed, becoming somewhat scaly.
- Stems: Twigs shiny, gray to yellowish, smooth.
- Leaves: Alternate, simple, lanceolate to broadly lanceolate, long-pointed at the tip, tapering or rounded at the base, finely toothed, up to 3 inches long, up to 1 1/2 inches wide, pale on the lower surface, smooth, without glands on the stalk;
- Flowers: Male and female borne in dense spikes on the same tree, opening as the leaves begin to open; male spikes very slender, up to 4 inches long; female spikes not as slender, up to 3 inches long.
- Sepals: 0.
- Petals: 0.
- Stamens: 4-7.
- Pistils: Ovary smooth.
- Fruits: Capsules ovoid, up to 1/4 inch long, smooth, not crowded in the spike, each capsule on a very short stalk.
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Return to Species List -- Group 5
Next Species -- Pacific Willow (Salix lasiandra)
