| Salix arctica Pall. | |||
| |||
| Family | Salicaceae — APG family: Salicaceae | ||
| Common name | arctic willow | ||
| Description | Dwarf shrub, with thick, trailing, glabrous branches; leaves ovate to obovate, entire in the margin, dark green above and paler beneath, somewhat pubescent when young, later glabrescent; catkins 2-3 cm long, borne on long, leafy, peduncles at maturity; bracts broad, blunt, dark, with long, white hairs; capsules pubescent, in age often glabrescent, with styles about 1 mm long; stamens 2, filaments glabrous. | ||
| Ecology | Dry tundra, mostly in mountains. | ||
| Taxonomy notes | The Salix arctica group is extremely variable, owing to a large extent to intro- gression between the 3 races subsp. arctica, subsp. crassijulis, and subsp. torulosa, but also to hybridization or introgression with several other, not very closely related species, including S. pulchra, S. Barclayi, S. Richardsonii, S. ovalifolia, S. stolonifera, S. rotundifolia, S. phlebophylla, S. polaris subsp. pseudopolaris, and S. glauca. S. glacialis Anderss. is considered to be the hybrid S. arctica X ovalifolia; it differs from S. ovalifolia in having more or less pubescent capsules, and occurs where the 2 species overlap. |
This is a digital representation of Eric Hultén’s ‘Flora of Alaska and Neighboring Territories: A Manual of the Vascular Plants’, which was published by Stanford University Press in 1968. The book was digitized by C. Webb (at UAMN) as part of the Flora of Alaska project, with funding by the US NSF (Grant 1759964 to Ickert-Bond & Webb), and with permission of Stanford University Press. Data and images © 1968 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. Univ. Usage licence: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0. NB: You may find OCR errors; please refer to the hard-copy if in doubt.