Trees or shrubs. Leaf blade oblanceolate, lanceolate, or elliptic to broadly elliptic, margin dentate, subentire, serrulate, or crenate-serrate, apex long acuminate to acute. Flowering nearly coetaneous. Male catkin slender; bracts yellowish green. Male flower: glands adaxial and abaxial, connate at base to form multifid disc; stamens (3 or)4-6(-8). Female catkin rarely with slightly dense flowers, usually pedunculate; peduncle with leaflets. Female flower: adaxial gland usually horseshoe-shaped, semiclasping stipe; ovary narrowly ovoid to ovoid, glabrous, long stipitate; style very short, to 0.3 mm, or absent; stigma capitate or 2-lobed;

A. K. Skvortsov indicates that and Salix dunnii, S. mesnyi, S. nankingensis, S. neowilsonii, S. rosthornii, S. warburgii, and S. wilsonii so closely resemble each other that they may be taken for one variable and widely distributed species.