A large impressive tree with long silvery-white leaves growing next to any watercourse or wet meadow is quite likely to be White Willow, but it can also thrive in damp woodland and along railway lines and on wasteland.
Native across all of north-west Europe, Mediterranean North Africa, and east through Turkey, the Caucasus and southern Russia to Central Asia. Botanists treat it as an archaeophyte in Britain and a neophyte in Ireland, though general literature often calls it native, perhaps because it is so widely naturalised on damp ground, except in uplands and exposed coasts.
Dioecious. Insect-pollinated. Seeds are wind-dispersed. A pioneer tree species in wet habitats.
A large (30m), fast-growing, often leaning tree with a silvery-white-tinted summer crown, heavily branched with ascending limbs drooping at fine tips, and commonly pollarded. Bark grey-brown, becoming a rugged criss-cross lattice. Twigs slender, grey-green, flexible. Leaves lanceolate, finely serrate, silky-haired (persisting beneath). Male catkins yellow, 3-5cm; female green-silver. Crack Willow differs: glossier, hairless leaves.
Favours deep and fertile soils in wet areas, but can be used to restore soils. Trees can be pollarded to improve access or safety, or where traditional in the landscape. Easily propagated using cuttings.
An important riparian tree, protecting banks from erosion and filtering nitrates and other pollutants. An excellent early-year source of pollen and nectar. Many insects feed on its leaves, including the Puss Moth (Cerura vinula), and its trunks and heavy branches provide nesting and roosting sites for birds.
Watermark disease caused by the bacterium Brenneria salicis causes leaves to wilt and dieback. Also leaf rusts.
Its wood is light, pale and flexible, traditionally used for kitchen utensils, basket-weaving and carving. Willow rods woven between riverbank posts root and stabilise banks, a technique called 'willow spiling'. Its bark and leaves contain salicylic acid, once chewed for pain relief and later used to make aspirin in the nineteenth century.
