Salix × smithiana
Credits
Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles
Recommended citation
'Salix × smithiana' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
Synonyms
- Salix × sericans Tausch
- Salix gmelinii
Other taxa in genus
- Salix aegyptiaca
- Salix alba
- Salix amygdaloides
- Salix arbuscula
- Salix arbutifolia
- Salix arctica
- Salix aurita
- Salix babylonica
- Salix bockii
- Salix 'Boydii'
- Salix caesia
- Salix × calodendron
- Salix candida
- Salix caprea
- Salix cinerea
- Salix cordata
- Salix daphnoides
- Salix × dasyclados
- Salix discolor
- Salix elaeagnos
- Salix exigua
- Salix fargesii
- Salix fragilis
- Salix glabra
- Salix glaucosericea
- Salix gracilistyla
- Salix hastata
- Salix herbacea
- Salix hookeriana
- Salix humboldtiana
- Salix irrorata
- Salix japonica
- Salix jessoensis
- Salix lanata
- Salix lapponum
- Salix lasiandra
- Salix lindleyana
- Salix lucida
- Salix magnifica
- Salix matsudana
- Salix × meyeriana
- Salix × mollissima
- Salix moupinensis
- Salix myrsinifolia
- Salix myrsinites
- Salix myrtilloides
- Salix nakamurana
- Salix nigra
- Salix nigricans
- Salix nipponica
- Salix pentandra
- Salix petiolaris
- Salix phylicifolia
- Salix purpurea
- Salix pyrenaica
- Salix pyrifolia
- Salix repens
- Salix reticulata
- Salix retusa
- Salix rigida
- Salix × rubra
- Salix sachalinensis
- Salix scouleriana
- Salix × sepulcralis
- Salix sericea
- Salix silesiaca
- Salix starkeana
- Salix × subalpina
- Salix triandra
- Salix triandra
- Salix uva-ursi
- Salix viminalis
- Salix wilhelmsiana
Editorial Note
Several factors – wide phenotypic variation, a propensity to hybridise (amplified by a dioecious sexual system), and a labyrinth of reticulate lineages – combine to create a taxonomic picture of considerable complexity (i.e. chaos) for the genus Salix. Revised classifications are continually called into question by new molecular studies, and opinion is anything but settled.
Bean treated this hybrid (S. caprea × S. viminalis) as the nothospecies Salix × sericans Tausch., though it is more commonly known under the synonym S. × smithiana Willd., which Bean (1981) interpreted as a clonal name and Clarke (1988) wrongly understood as S. cinerea × S. viminalis (= Salix × holosericea Willd.) Both S. × sericans and S. × smithiana are – unhelpfully – referred to Salix gmelinii by POWO (19/5/2025), effectively leaving the hybrid without a nothospecies name; POWO’s synonymy is not supported by other research (e.g. Vašut et al. 2024).
In most other cases, we retain Bean’s nomenclature for hybrid taxa within Salix, pending a full, revised treatement of this most challenging genus to be undertaken when funding is available. If you would like to sponsor the entry for this genus please write to editor@treesandshrubsonline.org
A hybrid between S. caprea and S. viminalis, the common osier, making a tall shrub or small tree to 20 ft or so high; young stems sparsely hairy, soon becoming more or less glabrous. Leaves broadly oblong-elliptic or broadly lanceolate, to about 7 in. long, soon glabrous above, the undersides greenish, coated with a thin woolly indumentum, the lateral and cross-veins both prominent. Catkins produced before the leaves, 11⁄2 to 2 in. long.
This hybrid is fairly widely distributed in the British Isles, in waste ground, hedgerows, etc., either spontaneously or planted. The very vigorous male clone in commerce as S. × smithiana probably belongs here and agrees quite well with the male that has been cultivated since early in the 19th century under the name “S. rugosa”.
The hybrid between S. viminalis and S. cinerea also occurs. It differs in the more persistent down on the stems, the relatively narrower, lanceolate leaves, their undersides eventually almost glabrous and the cross-veins not prominent. This hybrid is less common than S. × sericans and male plants are rare. [On this hybrid, Clarke (1988) refers to Meikle, Salix, in C.A. Stace (ed.), Hybridization and the Flora of the British Isles (1975): 102, 118–19.]