Alternative Names 

Mountain Willow

Salix scouleriana is characterized by flowering before the leaves emerge, branchlets and petioles velvety; leaves often obovate and with appressed white or ferruginous hairs abaxially; and pistils with long beaks and stigmas. It displays two forms of pubescence on the abaxial leaf surfaces, most are sparsely pubescent with short, appressed, white or ferruginous hairs, but some are densely woolly with long, wavy, erect, white hairs (S. scouleriana f. poikila).

General: Large erect shrub or tree up to 20 m tall. Usually several trunks with new shoots arising from the root crown. Trunk bark gray, smooth; branching often at right angles to the stem as for S. bebbiana, but stouter and “knobby” from the enlarged leaf scars, catkin buds round-oval with an elongated tip, not shiny, much

larger than leaf buds; catkin buds develop by midwinter, the bud scales remain attached at the base but split open to the tip exposing the emerging catkin’s white silk, making this willow very conspicuous in late winter. Sometimes hollow stem gall, with several communicating chambers at the end of stem, often with dried leaves still attached. Similar galls on S. bebbiana have a single chamber, are in the middle of the stem, and usually without attached dried leaves. Common in mixed forest in the uplands and in disturbed sites.

Leaves

2 to 5 inches long, and 1/2 to 1-1/2 inches wide;

Wider above middle, short-pointed at tip, edges without teeth;

Young leaves velvety hairy;

Older leaves dark green, sparse white to rusty hair underneath;

Crowded at ends of twigs.

Fruit

Seed capsules long, slender, gray-wooly.

Bark

Smooth gray, becoming dark brown, divided into broad flat ridges.

Size at maturity 

Usually about 15 feet tall, 4 inches in diameter;

Can grow to be 50 to 60 feet tall, 16 to 20 inches in diameter.

Habitat and distribution

Colonizes burned-over areas, thrives away from water;

Forms thickets, often found along forest edges;

A fast-growing, short-lived pioneer;

From interior Alaska east to Saskatchewan and south to New Mexico.