Shrubs to 2 m tall. Branchlets yellowish or yellowish brown or grayish purplish brown, rarely grayish green, glabrous or slightly pilose. Buds ovoid, with filamentous hairs. Stipules very small or absent; petiole short; leaf blade linear, linear-oblanceolate, or falcate-oblanceolate, 1.5-4 cm × 2-4 mm, at first filamentous downy, becoming subglabrous, base attenuate, margin subentire or indistinctly serrulate, apex long acuminate; midvein conspicuous abaxially. Flowering precocious or nearly coetaneous. Catkins terete, 1-1.5(-2) cm, subsessile, with 1 or 2 scalelike leaflets at base; rachis pilose; bracts brownish or yellowish green, brown at apex, oblong, sparsely villous at margin, apex truncate or obtuse. Male flower: adaxial gland small; stamens 2, connate throughout. Female flower: ovary greenish brown, ovoid-conical, glabrous, sessile; style conspicuous; stigma russet, 2-lobed. Fl. May, fr. Jun-Jul.

Riverbanks, damp places between dunes. Hebei, W Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, E Nei Mongol [Mongolia, Russia (C and S Siberia)].