Willow

There are a large and confusing number of types of Willow growing wild in Scotland. There are also many introduced and cultivated types, found where they were once used for baskets and fishing creels, and ornamental types, but these towering types with pointed spear-shaped leaves are not covered here. But there are many forms that fit into the native and common grouping called Sallow. There are the small bushy types, like ‘woolly willow’, and ‘eared willow’, and the taller more up-reaching Grey Willow, the Goat Willow or Common Sallow, and the Great Sallow. The biggest Sallows can be twenty metres high, but old specimens tend to lean or lie over, their trunk and branches sending up new growth as they touch the wet earth. Willows are never far from water or wet ground, and are usually found in low-lying places but some small bushy types can be seen at quite high altitude if the ground or climate is damp enough. This is one of our most widespread trees, from the far South-west to the Northern Isles. Each kind will flower and set seed well every year, a mass of tiny seeds borne away on the wind by their fine white hairs. The flowers are in catkin form – ‘caitean’ in Gaelic – the male in silvery plumes with yellow gold grains of pollen, the female upright of green scales that burst open to release the hairy seeds in Spring and Summer. The larger types of Sallow, with large catkins, flower earliest, the smaller types with smaller catkins a little later. In the past the fluffy mass of seed was gathered for dressing wounds, like lint or cottonwool. Another medicinal use of the tree has been the extraction of pain-killing substances in its bark - refined to become ‘salicin’, the original aspirin. Bark and branches are consistently pale grey, with dark waving lines in age. Twigs can be a variety of greens and glossy reds, as can the buds. The leaves of the bigger types are large and oval, and wavy-edged,. pale and downy underneath Leaves of smaller types may be small and rounder-tipped, olive-coloured and rough, or dark and smooth and pointed. Centuries ago a white rod was carried by the Lords of the Isles, the white wood of the willow symbolizing truth and justice. The Gaelic name for the tree – ‘shelloch’, or ‘suil’ – is in place-names throughout the Highlands, such as Auchnashelloch and Glensuileag.