Shrubs or small trees. Branchlets chestnut brown, glabrous. Stipules reniform or obliquely ovate, dentate; petiole 5-7 mm, glabrous; leaf blade elliptic, rarely suborbicular or oblanceolate, (2-)6-10 × (1.5-)4-5 cm, both surfaces glabrous, slightly pub peduncleescent when young, abaxially pale, adaxially green or dull green, base broadly cuneate or rounded, margin entire, or on shoots or distal part of branchlets, irregularly dentate, apex acute, obtuse, or rounded. Flowering coetaneous or slightly precocious. Male catkin ellipsoid or shortly cylindric, 1.5(-2.5) × 1-1.2 cm; peduncle short, with a few leaflets; bracts elliptic-obovate, apex brownish or nearly black. Male flower: gland 1; stamens 2; filaments glabrous, 5-6 × as long as bracts. Female catkin 1-3 × 0.8-1 cm; peduncle ca. 5 mm, to 1 cm in fruit, pubescent, with a few leaflets at base; bracts as in male catkin. Female flower: gland adaxial, 5-7 × shorter than stipe; ovary narrowly conical, ca. 2 mm, downy; stipe ca. as long as ovary; style short; stigma 2-cleft. Capsule ca. 7 mm, pilose. Fl. Apr, fr. Jun.

A. K. Skvortsov indicates that the European species Salix starkeana Willdenow, as treated in Fl. Intramongol., was based on misidentified specimens of S. taraikensis.

Mountain slopes, woods. Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Nei Mongol, Xinjiang (Altay Shan) [Japan, Mongolia, Russia]