Salix pycnostachya Anderss.

Shrubs to 6 m tall; bark yellowish green. Branchlets yellowish green, glabrous, shiny; juvenile branchlets tomentulose or glabrescent. Buds yellowish brown, tomentulose. Stipules linear, caducous or not; petiole 5-10 mm, glabrous; leaf blade oblanceolate, usually broader distally, 8-10 × 1-1.5 cm, both surfaces nearly uniformly colored, slightly pilose or appressd pubescent when young, glabrescent or subglabrous, base cuneate, margin entire or remotely shallowly dentate, apex acuminate. Flowering nearly coetaneous. Catkins 2-3 cm × ca. 5 mm; peduncle ca. 1 cm, with 2 or 3 leaflets; rachis downy; bracts brownish, spatulate or long ovate, abaxially glabrous, wrinkled, villous at base and margin, apex rounded, brown or russet. Male flower: adaxial gland elliptic; stamens 2, connate at least in part, glabrous or downy at base. Fruiting catkin bracts not caducous. Female flower: ovary conical, glabrous or pubescent, shortly stipitate; style short; stigma 2-cleft. Fl. Jun, fr. Jul.

Shrub or tree up to 10 m tall. Branchlets glabrous shiny. Leaves stipulate, stipules linear, caducous; petiole 1.5-6 mm, lamina (2.3)-4-10x0.5-2.5 cm, lanceolate to linear-lanceolate, elliptic, silky beneath, becoming glabrous on both sides, margin entire to minutely denticulate, tip acuminate. Catkin appearing slightly early or almost at the same time as leaves, sessile to briefly pedunculate. Male catkin at anthesis 2.5-5x0.7-0.9 cm. Female catkin 3-8x0.8-1 cm. Bracts dark brown to blackish, 1-2.5x0.7-1.6 mm, generally obtuse, hairy, hairs long, Filaments connate throughout, 4-5 mm long, hairy at the base. Anthers 0.5-0.6 mm long. Gland linear. Ovary sessile, 2.5 mm long, ovoid, acutish at the tip, glabrous, almost style less (style 0.3-0.7 mm). Stigmas 2, short, erect, bilobed 0.3-0.7 mm. Capsule stipitate, stipe 0.1-0.8 mm long, mature capsule 4-6 mm long, lanceolate-conical, hairy to glabrous.

Nepal.

S Xinjiang, W Xizang [Afghanistan, ?Bhutan, India, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan].

Distribution: Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan (Chitral, Gilgit, Swat), Kashmir, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Khirgzstan and China (S. Xinjiang) (F. Zhenfu, Z.Shidong & A.K. Skvortsov, l.c.)

4000 m

Fl. Per.: May-July.

River valleys, mountain slopes; circa 4400 m.