Salicaceae Mirb.

Trees or shrubs, sometimes dioecious, glabrous or pubescent, with or without spines, sometimes deciduous with well developed winter buds, the bud scales often sticky. Leaves alternate, spirally arranged, rarely opposite, simple, lamina margin sometimes toothed and gland-bearing; stipules present or absent. Inflorescence variable, axillary or terminal, a catkin, spike, raceme, cluster, or solitary flower. Catkin flowers dioecious (rarely monoecious), subtended by a scale-like bract; perianth absent; 1 or 2 tongue-like nectaries or a single cup-like nectary at base of each flower. Male flowers with stamens 1 to many; filaments free or partially connate; anthers bilocular. Female flowers with ovary superior, often stipitate, 1-locular; stigmas 2–4, usually bilobed; ovules many, rarely 4; placentation parietal. Non-catkin flowers actinomorphic, bisexual or dioecious; sepals mostly 3–15, imbricate or valvate, free or united, sometimes scarcely differentiated from petals. Petals free, imbricate or valvate, the same number as and alternating with sepals, or more numerous and spirally arranged with gradation from sepals to petals, caducous or persistent, or absent. Receptacle often glandular or expanded into a disc. Stamens same number as petals or numerous; filaments free or connate; anthers bilocular, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, rarely half-inferior, unilocular with 2–10 parietal placentas, sometimes made incompletely 2–10-locular by the deeply protruding placentas; ovules 2 to many, amphitropous or anatropous. Styles 1–10, free or connate. Fruit a capsule, dehiscing by valves, or a berry or drupe, or dry and indehiscent. Seeds sometimes arillate or with a tuft of hairs attached to the funicle, or embedded in a pulp; endosperm present or absent.

Salix is used in traditional folk medicine (see notes below). Several species of Populus (poplars) and Salix (willows) are widely cultivated except in the lowland tropics. There are small plantations of P. deltoides Marshall (Eastern Cottonwood) and P. ×canadensis Moench (Canadian Poplar) established on alluvial soils in southern Australia for production of matchsticks and ply veneer. Willows are often planted in southern Australia for stream bank protection, frequently leading to rapid naturalisation by rooting of detached branches washed downstream. The Cricket-bat Willow, a glaucous-leaved form of S. alba L., was widely planted in Victoria in the 19th and early 20th Centuries as a potential timber tree but rarely used for that purpose. Flacourtia jangomas (Indian Plum) is occasionally cultivated in Australia as an exotic fruit tree.