Salix babylonica L.
weeping willow
Large spreading tree to c. 30 m high; bark fissured, grey. Smaller branches, branchlets and shoots long, slender, pendulous. Shoots green or brownish green, rather brittle. Shoots and lvs with appressed hairs, soon glabrous. Buds very small, soon glabrous. Petiole 5-8 mm long. Lamina 6-13 × 1-2 cm, narrow-lanceolate, glaucescent or glaucous below, slightly shining above, rather remotely serrulate; apex long-acuminate. Lvs subtending catkins generally c. 3 × c. 0.8-1 cm; apex acute or short-acuminate. Stipules on long shoots with curved apices. Catkins ♀, appearing with and after lvs on short leafy shoots, 1.5-3 cm long, narrow-cylindric, often curved; rachis villous. Bracts 2-2.5 mm long, narrow-triangular or lanceolate-oblong, green; margin not incurved; apex acute. Gland 1, 0.5-0.6 mm diam., broadly rectangular or almost square, sometimes 2-lobed. Ovary sessile, glabrous.
N.; S.: sporadic throughout lowland areas.
China 1883
Moist places near still or flowing water.
FL Aug-Sep.
S. babylonica is cultivated on riverbanks, lakesides and similar moist places all over N.Z. as an ornamental and shade tree. This common weeping willow seems to be less frequently naturalised than the similar S. × chrysocoma, golden weeping willow. Weeping willow was introduced to N.Z. in the early period of European settlement; probably the first plants were brought by a French settler to Akaroa in 1840, although it may have been planted at the N. Auckland mission stations prior to this. Several accounts affirm that the source was near Napoleon's grave on St Helena. Weeping willows were soon growing in most of the European settlements and S. babylonica was the only pendulous willow here until near the end of the century. In N.Z., as elsewhere, only ♀ trees are known, and here at least are all apparently one clone. This fact supports the conclusion from recent studies that S. babylonica may be a form of S. matsudana.
