General: Dioecious shrubs, 0.3-3 (-6) m tall, not colonial, erect or decumbent; branches erect, flexible at base; twigs red- to yellow-brown, sparsely to densely hairy.
Leaves: Alternate, simple, narrowly elliptic to lance- to egg-shaped, 3-8 cm long, 1-4 cm wide, lower surface glaucous, long soft-woolly, silky or sparsely long soft-hairy, often becoming nearly smooth, hairs white, upper surface shiny, long soft-hairy or sparsely long soft-hairy to nearly smooth, entire, bases pointed to rounded, tips pointed; leaf stalks without glandular dots at top; stipules leaflike or rudimentary.
Flowers: Unisexual, lacking sepals and petals, borne in catkins which flower as leaves emerge, the catkins stout, on leafy twigs; floral bracts pale, hairs wavy; stamens 2; ovaries 1, hairy; styles 0.3-1.4 mm long.
Fruits: Capsules which split open to release the seeds, each of which is surrounded by a tuft of hairs; stalks 0.3-2.8 mm long.
Notes: The varieties villosa and acutifolia intergrade in northern BC where they overlap in the Haines Road region. They both sometimes appear to hybridize with S. arctica.
Wet to mesic thickets, fens, swamps, streambanks and forest openings from the montane to alpine zones; common throughout BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains (var. villosa) and locally frequent (var. acutifolia) in NW BC; circumpolar, var. acutifolia - N to AK and NT, var. villosa - N to YT and NT, E to NF, S to UT, NM and WA; Greenland, Eurasia.
The table below shows the species-specific information calculated from original data (BEC database) provided by the BC Ministry of Forests and Range. (Updated August, 2013)
