Salix barclayi : Barclays Mountain Willow

Scientific Name:

Kingdom: Plantae

Division:

• Tracheophyta (vascular)
• Spermatophyta (seed bearing)
Angiospermae (enclosed seed)

Class: Dicoteldonae (two seed-leaves)

Family: Salicaceae (Willow Family)

Genera: Salix (Willows) (Classic Latin name for willow)

Species: barclayi

English Name(s):

Barclays Mountain Willow,

First Nation Names:

K'aii

Structure:

• Thicket forming shrub
• Stems often 2-3 meters high but much lower in alpine situations.
• Branches dark reddish-brown, glabrous or with a persistant indumentum for 2 years.
• Branchlets yellowish green, dencely to sparsely villous (woolly).

Leaves:

• 3-8cm long and about half as wide.
• Elliptic-obovate in shape, with an acute tip and tappering or rounded base.
• Surfaces green above, glaucous (blueish waxy) below.
• Drying black.
• Margins finely glandular serrate (toothed) or in some entire (smooth).
• Petioles (stalks) short.
• Those of vigorous sterile shoots often with leafy stipules up to 1 cm long.

Reproductive Parts:

• Flowers lacking a parianth(sepals + petals). Born in cylindrical catkins.
• Plants dioecious (uni-sexual).
• Catkins on leafy peduncles (stalks) and appearing with the leaves.
• Pistillate (female) catkins up to 7cm long, pistils green, glabrous (smooth).

Seed:

• Seed capsules up to 5.0-6.5mm long, glabrous (smooth).
• Styles 0.6-1.6mm long.
• Nectaries about half as long as the stipes (stalks).
• Bracts narrowly oblong, acute to attenuate (tappering to a point), light to dark brown or bicolour, pubescent (hairy) with long hairs.

Not to Be Confused With:

Physiology:

• Are insect pollenated. Both male and female flowers have nectaries to attract pollenating insects. Male pollen is also brightly coloured red or yellow to attract insects.
• Several types of galls can be seen on willows. These are deformations of plant tissue caused by the physical actions or chemical secretions of insects.
• Willow Roses are a type of gall that grows on some species of willow. It is caused by the larvae of Cecidomyia rosaria. The larvae through chemical secretions cause the leaves of the bud to grow in a rose petal like fashion.

Life Cycle:

• Perennial.

Seasonal Cycle:

• Leaves and catkins deciduous.
• Catkins appearing with the leaves.

Animal Uses:

• In spring and early summer the catkins and young leaves are eagerly eaten by many mammals and birds.
• Moose, caribou and deer all eat the twigs and young branches.
• The twigs and bark are eaten by hares and lemmings.
• Willow is an important food for bears and a secondary food for beavers.
• Willow is an important food for many animals.
• Winter buds are one of the principle winter foods of ptarmigan and grouse.

Habitat:

• On glacial moraines, lakeshores and riverbanks, subalpine and alpine slopes, and occasionally in muskegs and fens.

Modern:

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Traditional Gwich'in:

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Traditional Other:

Folklore:

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