米黄柳 mi huang liu

Salix caspica Pallas var. michelsonii (Goerz ex Nasarow) Pojak.

Shrubs to 4 m tall; bark bluish gray. Branchlets pendulous, yellow, slender, glabrous, shiny. Buds yellowish brown, small, slightly tomentose, apex acute. Leaves petiolate; leaf blade linear-lanceolate, 4-10 cm × 4-6 mm, slightly tomentulose when young, glabrescent, nearly uniformly colored on both surfaces, base cuneate, margin remotely sharply dentate, apex acuminate; lateral veins diverging from yellowish midvein at acute angle. Flowering precocious or coetaneous. Male catkin unknown. Female catkin 3-5 cm × ca. 4 mm; peduncle 5-10 mm, with 2 or 3 leaflets; bracts brownish, oblong, abaxially glabrous, adaxially white downy at base, acute at apex, wholly or partly caducous in fruit. Female flower: ovary ovoid-conical, glabrous; stipe 0.5-2 mm; style short or absent; stigma 2-cleft. Capsule brown, ca. 5 mm, glabrous. Fl. May, fr. Jun.

Alongside desert rivers. W Xinjiang [S Kazakhstan]