General: Dioecious shrubs, 0.8-4 m tall, forming colonies by root shoots; branches erect, flexible at base; twigs gray-brown, smooth or sparsely to densely hairy.
Leaves: Alternate, simple, strap-shaped or narrowly oblong to narrowly elliptic, 3-8.5 cm long, 0.5-2 cm wide, lower surface glaucous or not, long soft-hairy to nearly smooth, hairs white, upper surface shiny, long soft-hairy to nearly smooth, margins usually minutely spiny-toothed, bases and tips pointed; leaf stalks without glandular dots at top; stipules leaflike.
Flowers: Unisexual, lacking sepals and petals, borne in catkins which flower as leaves emerge or throughout season, the catkins slender, on leafy twigs; floral bracts pale, smooth or hairy, hairs wavy, female bracts deciduous; stamens 2; ovaries 1, smooth; styles 0.2-0.4 mm long.
Fruits: Capsules which split open to release the seeds, each of which is surrounded by a tuft of hairs; stalks 0.2-0.7 mm long.
Notes: Salix melanopsis and its long soft-hairy-leaved phase, which has been called S. sessilifolia var. vancouverensis Brayshaw, differ from S. sessilifolia in having shorter stigmas and nearly smooth or long soft-hairy rather than densely silky leaves.
Pioneer on moist to mesic, sandy or gravelly floodplains of streams and rivers in the steppe and montane zones; infrequent in S BC, rare northward; E to AB and S to CO, UT, and CA.
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)
