Description
It is a deciduous shrub or small tree, depending on the environment, usually with multiple stems that reach 2 to 7 m in height in dry, cold, high elevations, and other difficult environments, and 10 to 20 m in favorable sites. The stems are straight and support few branches generally resulting in narrow crowns. The root system is fibrous, deep, and widespread. The thick sapwood is nearly white, and heartwood is light brown tinged with red. Stem bark is thin, gray or dark brown, with broad, flat ridges. Twigs are stout and whitish-green. The leaves are oblanceolate to elliptic, 5–12.5 cm long, mostly short-pointed at the apex and tapered toward the base, with entire to sparsely wavy-toothed margins. They are dark-green and nearly hairless above, and white- or grayish-hairy below.
It is dioecious, having male and female flowers on different trees. The flowers are tiny, grouped in pussy willow-like catkins. The anthers, two per flower, are yellow, sometimes tipped with red; pistils are red. The fruit is light reddish-brown, long-pointed capsules about 0.75 cm long. At maturity, they open to release a white fluff with tiny, imbedded seeds. The species has 2n = 76 or 114 chromosomes.
Read more about this topic: Salix Scouleriana
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Once a child has demonstrated his capacity for independent functioning in any area, his lapses into dependent behavior, even though temporary, make the mother feel that she is being taken advantage of....What only yesterday was a description of the child’s stage in life has become an indictment, a judgment.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)