Salix atrocinerea Brot.
Eng.: Grey willow, rusty sallow. Spa.: Sauce, bardaguera, salguera, mimbre. Fre.: Saule roux-cendré. Ara.: Asafsaf
Deciduous shrub or small tree, dioecious, up to 12 m in height, irregular in shape. Trunk ± straight, often sinuous, somewhat tortuous, with greyish-brown bark, in old specimens fissured. Branches usually extended-erect or erect. Young branchlets pubescent; from 2 years old or older glabrous or glabrescent, brown-reddish or brown-grey. Buds brownish, ± pubescent. Leaves 2-11 × 1-4 cm, alternate, deciduous, obovate-oblong or lanceolate, ± ellipsoid, with acute or obtuse tip, flat or somewhat revolute margin, entire or dentate-serrate; densely tomentose when born, turning less tomentose, with white and reddish-ferruginous mixed hairs; green and hairless on the upper side, with some form of hair on the underside, also with mixed white and reddish hairs, rarely glabrescent, glaucous. Petiole short, 0.3-0.8 cm, hairy. Stipules small, semicordiform or reniform, dentate. Inflorescence in erect aments, alternate, pedunculate, precocious (they develop before the leaves). Rachis very hairy, with hairy bracts heterogeneous in colour: light green base and dark brown apex. Male flower with 1 nectary and 2 stamens with free filaments, hairy on the lower third. Female flower with 1 nectary and pedicellate and tomentose ovary. Fruit an ovoid-conical capsule, tomentose, dehiscent in 2 valves that release numerous seeds, tiny and covered in fine hairs. 2n = 76.
Flowering:
January to April.
Fruiting:
March to May.
Habitat:
Banks of rivers, streams, canals, lakes and other wetlands, up to 2,400 m.
Distribution:
Atlantic Europe, Corsica and North Africa; in the latter it occurs disseminated throughout the wetter regions of central and northern Morocco and from Little Kabylia (Algeria) to Cape Bon (Tunisia).
Observations:
Polymorphous species of which a number of subspecies, varieties and forms have been described, especially considering the hairiness, colour and shape of leaves. The correct classification of all the variants poses serious problems both due to the large variability in leaf shape and because it easily hybridises with S. pedicellata Desf., an Atlantic vicariant of S. cinerea L., with which it coexists and hybridises in much of Europe, confusing botanists. S. cinerea has been cited in Ifrane (Middle Atlas), but the spontaneity of this species here is doubtful.
Conservation status:
Relatively common and widespread species. It is not considered threatened. Currently, it has not been assessed at a global level in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.