Family: willows (Salicaceae
Time of flowering: April–June
Size: up to 6 m
Habitat: damp meadows, wetlands and banks of water
Powdery-gray willow (Salix cinerea) is a shrub that flowers before leaf-out. Its catkins are usually 3 to 4 cm long. The female catkins elongate during fruiting; for the males, the stamens are orange-red just before flowering. Young twigs are densely gray, velvety, short-haired. Gray-brown twigs are robust. On the wood of older peeled branches there are pronounced, a few-centimetre-long ridges – grooves. Oval to obovate summer leaves are up to 9 cm long and two- to four-times longer than their width. On the underside they are light gray and velvety-haired, their leaf margins are wavy to coarsely toothed.
With the exception of the Alpine region, the powdery-gray willow can be found throughout Slovenia.
