Salix capusii Franch.

Shrubs to 6 m tall; bark dull gray. Branchlets chestnut-brown, slender, glabrous; juvenile branchlets yellowish, pilose. Stipules linear, caducous; petiole 2-4 mm, at first pilose, glabrescent; leaf blade linear-oblanceolate or narrowly oblanceolate, usually broadest distally, 4-5 cm × ca. 6 mm, nearly uniformly grayish blue, tomentulose when young, glabrous when mature, base cuneate, margin entire or serrulate, apex shortly acuminate. Flowering nearly coetaneous. Male catkin 4-4.5 cm × 6-8 mm, sessile or shortly pedunculate, with leaflets at base; bracts yellowish green, oblong or oblong-obovate, ca. 1/2 as long as filaments, abaxially glabrous or sparsely villous, adaxially white downy at base, apex nearly truncate. Male flower: stamens 2; filaments connate, basally pilose; anthers yellow, globose. Female catkin 1.5-2.5 cm, elongated in fruit; peduncle with leaflets; bracts as in male catkin but wholly or partly caducous in fruit. Female flower: ovary thinly conical, glabrous; stipe ca. 1 mm; style short; stigma conspicuous. Capsule greenish or yellowish, conical, 4-5 mm. Fl. Apr-May, fr. May-Jun.

Tree 4-8 m tall, branches mostly covered with white bloom. Stipules minute or absent. Petiole 1-4 mm long. Lamina (0.8)-1.5-6.5 cm x 2.5-9 mm, lanceolate to oblanceolate, glabrous to sericeo pilose, margin serrulate, tip acute rarely obtuse to subobtuse, mucronate. Catkin appearing after leaves. Peduncle with 2-3 leaves. Male catkin at anthesis 15-40 x 4-6 mm. Bracts 1-2 x 0.5-0.7 mm, boat shaped, hairy or glabrous, tip rotund, subdentate to truncate. Stamens 2, filaments perfectly connate, 2.5-3.5 mm long with long hairs at the base. Anthers 0.3-0.4 mm long. Gland 1, pale, up to 0.5 mm long. Female catkin with 2-3 leaves at the base at maturity 10-40 x 8-10 mm, axis densely hairy. Bracts as in the male. Ovary 2-3 mm long, glabrous, or pubescent, stipe c. 1 mm, capsule 3.5-5 mm long, ovato-lanceolate, glabrous or hairy, stipe 0.5-1.5 mm, style 0.3-0.6 mm long, stigma bilobed each lobe bipartite, 0.3-0.5 mm long.

Xinjiang [Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan]

Distribution: Pakistan (Chitral, Kurram valley, Gilgit), Kashmir, 1500-3500 m; Afghanistan, Tajikistan; China (Xinjiang).

Fl. Per.: April-June.

Mountain river valleys; 1000-2800 m.

Salix coerulea E. L. Wolf (1903), not Smith (1812); S. niedzwieckii Goerz.

S. caerulea E. Wolf in Acta Horti Petrop. 21: 157. 1903 not, Smith 1812; Nazarov in Kom., Fl. USSR 5: 159. 1936; S. niedzwieckii Görz, Salic. Asiat. 1: 18. 1931.