24. Salix sitchensis Sanson. [Illustration: Fig. 158] Leaves oblong-obovate to oblanceolate, entire or minutely glandular dentate, acute or acuminate, or rounded and short-pointed, or rounded at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate at base, when they unfold pubescent or tomentose on the upper surface, and coated on the lower with lustrous white silky pubescence or tomentum persistent during the season or sometimes deciduous from the leaves of vigorous young shoots, at maturity thin and firm, dark green, lustrous and glabrous above, with the exception of the pubescent midrib, 2′—5′ long, ¾′—1½′ wide, with conspicuous slender veins arcuate and united within the margins and prominent reticulate veinlets; petioles stout, pubescent, rarely ½′ long; stipules rarely produced, foliaceous, semilunar, acute or rounded at apex, glandular-dentate, coated below with hoary tomentum, often ½′ long, caducous. Flowers: aments cylindric, densely flowered, erect on short tomentose leafy branchlets, the staminate 1½′—2′ long and ½′ thick, the pistillate 2½′—3′ long, and ¼′ thick; scales yellow or tawny, the staminate oblong-obovate, rounded at the apex, covered with long white hairs, much longer than the more acute pubescent scales of the pistillate ament; stamen 1, with an elongated glabrous filament, or very rarely 2, with filaments united below the middle or nearly to the apex; ovary short-stalked, ovoid, conic, acute, pubescent and gradually narrowed into the elongated style, with entire or slightly emarginate short stigmas. Fruit ovoid, narrowed above, light red-brown, pubescent about ¼′ long. A much-branched tree, occasionally 25°—30° high, with a short contorted often inclining trunk sometimes 1° in diameter, and slender brittle branchlets coated at first with hoary tomentum, pubescent and tomentose and dark red-brown or orange color during their first winter, becoming darker, pubescent or glabrous, and sometimes covered with a glaucous bloom in their second season; more often shrubby and 6°—15° tall. Winter-buds acute, nearly terete, light red-brown, pubescent or puberulous, about ¼′ long. Bark about ⅛′ thick and broken into irregular closely appressed dark brown scales tinged with red. Wood light, soft, close-grained, pale red, with thick nearly white sapwood. Distribution. Banks of streams and in low moist ground; Cook Inlet and Kadiak Island, Alaska, southward in the neighborhood of the coast to Santa Barbara, California; on the Marble Creek of the Kaweah River at 6900° altitude (f. _Ralphiana_ Jeps.) VI. MYRICACEÆ.