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Montana Field Guides

Gray Willow - Salix glauca

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Native Species

Global Rank: G5
State Rank: S4
C-value: 7


Agency Status
USFWS:
USFS:
BLM:


 

External Links

 
General Description
Shrubs 20–100 cm. Twigs dark, pubescent. Leaf blades 2–5 cm long, elliptic with entire margins, hairy to glabrous above, sparsely hairy, glaucous below. Female catkins 1–6 cm long, emerging with the leaves on leafy branchlets 5–20 mm long; scales brown, long-hairy. Capsules densely hairy, 4–7 mm long; stipes 0.5–1 mm long; style 0.5–1 mm long (Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

Our plants are variety villosa Andersson.

Species Range
Montana Range Range Descriptions

Native
 


Range Comments
Circumpolar south to UT and NM (Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

Observations in Montana Natural Heritage Program Database
Number of Observations: 33

(Click on the following maps and charts to see full sized version) Map Help and Descriptions
Relative Density

Recency

 

(Observations spanning multiple months or years are excluded from time charts)



Habitat
Moist meadows, limestone talus slopes, often along streams or where snow lies late; alpine, subalpine (Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

Ecology
POLLINATORS
The following animal species have been reported as pollinators of this plant species or its genus where their geographic ranges overlap: Bombus vagans, Bombus bifarius, Bombus fervidus, Bombus frigidus, Bombus huntii, Bombus melanopygus, Bombus ternarius, Bombus terricola, Bombus sitkensis, Bombus occidentalis, Bombus pensylvanicus, Bombus bimaculatus, Bombus griseocollis, Bombus impatiens, and Bombus suckleyi (Plath 1934, Macior 1968, Heinrich 1976, Thorp et al. 1983, Colla and Dumesh 2010, Colla et al. 2011, Koch et al. 2012, Williams et al. 2014).

References
  • Literature Cited AboveLegend:   View Online Publication
    • Colla, S., L. Richardson, and P. Williams. 2011. Bumble bees of the eastern United States. Washington, DC: USDA Forest Service, Pollinator Partnership. 103 p.
    • Colla, S.R. and S. Dumesh. 2010. The bumble bees of southern Ontario: notes on natural history and distribution. Journal of the Entomological Society of Ontario 141:39-68.
    • Koch, J., J. Strange, and P. Williams. 2012. Bumble bees of the western United States. Washington, DC: USDA Forest Service, Pollinator Partnership. 143 p.
    • Lesica, P., M.T. Lavin, and P.F. Stickney. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. Fort Worth, TX: BRIT Press. viii + 771 p.
    • Macior, L.M. 1968. Bombus (Hymenoptera, Apidae) queen foraging in relation to vernal pollination in Wisconsin. Ecology 49:20-25.
    • Plath, O.E. 1934. Bumblebees and their ways. New York, NY: Macmillan Company. 201 p.
    • Thorp, R.W., D.S. Horning, and L.L. Dunning. 1983. Bumble bees and cuckoo bumble bees of California (Hymenoptera: Apidae). Bulletin of the California Insect Survey 23:1-79.
    • Williams, P., R. Thorp, L. Richardson, and S. Colla. 2014. Bumble Bees of North America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 208 p.
  • Additional ReferencesLegend:   View Online Publication
    Do you know of a citation we're missing?
    • Aho, Ken Andrew. 2006. Alpine and Cliff Ecosystems in the North-Central Rocky Mountains. Ph.D. Dissertation. Bozeman, Montana: Montana State University. 343 p.
    • Argus, G. 2010. Salix. In: Flora of North America Editorial Committee, eds. 1993+. Flora of North America North of Mexico. 16+ vols. New York and Oxford. Vol. 7.
    • Barge, E.G. 2015. Systematics of Lactarius in the Rocky Mountain alpine zone. M.Sc. Thesis. Bozeman, MT: Montana State University. 223 p.
    • Barge, E.G., C. Cripps and T.W. Osmundson. 2016. Systematics of the ectomycorrhizal genus Lactarius in the Rocky Mountain alpine zone. Mycologia, 108(2), 2016, pp. 414–440. DOI: 10.3852/15-177
    • Cripps, C.L., U. Eberhardt, N. Schutz, H.J. Beker, V.S. Evenson, and E. Horak. 2019. The genus Hebeloma in the Rocky Mountain alpine zone. MycoKeys 46: 1-54. https://doi.org/10.3897/mycokeys.46.32823
    • Culver, D.R. 1994. Floristic analysis of the Centennial Region, Montana. M.Sc. Thesis. Montana State University, Bozeman. 199 pp.
    • Dorn, R.D. 2010. The genus Salix in North America north of Mexico. 59 pp.
    • Lesica, P., M.T. Lavin, and P.F. Stickney. 2022. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants, Second Edition. Fort Worth, TX: BRIT Press. viii + 779 p.
    • Little, E.L., Jr. 1979. Checklist of United States trees (native and naturalized). Agriculture Handbook No. 541. U.S. Forest Service, Washington, D.C. 375 pp.
    • Noffsinger, C.R. 2020. Systematic analysis of Russula in the North American Rocky Mountain alpine zone. M.Sc. Thesis. Bozeman, MT: Montana State University. 277 p.
    • Osmundson, T.W. 2003. Systematics of Rocky Mountain alpine Laccaria (basidiomycota, agaricales, tricholomataceae) and ecology of Beartooth Plateau alpine macromycetes. M.Sc. Thesis. Bozeman, MT: Montana State University. 188 p.
    • Williams, K.L. 2012. Classification of the grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, forests and alpine vegetation associations of the Custer National Forest portion of the Beartooth Mountains in southcentral Montana. M.Sc. Thesis. Bozeman, MT: Montana State University. 376 p.
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Citation for data on this website:
Gray Willow — Salix glauca.  Montana Field Guide.  .  Retrieved on , from