Description:

• Deciduous trees or shrubs, sometimes creeping and spreading by suckering, with bitter bark and soft light wood; plants dioecious
• Leaves alternate, entire, toothed or occasionally lobed; stipules foliaceous and subpersistent, or small and caducous
• Inflorescences erect or pendulous spikes or catkins; bracts membranous, entire, toothed or laciniate, fugacious or persistent, subtending individual flowers, often appearing before leaves
• Perianth absent or represented by a cup-shaped or annular disc or 2 scales or glands at the base
• Male flowers with 2-many stamens; filaments free or ± connate; anthers small, ovate or oblong, opening by 2 longitudinal slits; ovary rudimentary or absent
• Female flowers with ovary superior, sessile or shortly stalked, 1-locular; ovules 2-many on each parietal or basal placenta, anatropous, crassinucellar, unitegmic; style short; stigmas 2-4, short, thick, emarginate or 2-fid
• Fruit a capsule, ovoid or oblong in outline, often acuminate, dehiscing by 2-4 valves
• Seeds many, very small, with large basal tuft of long hairs arising from funicle, not long-lived, distributed by wind; embryo small, straight; endosperm absent or very scanty and oily

Nomenclature:

• Salicaceae
  • Mirbel: 905 (1815)
  • Lindley: 186 (1836)
  • Andersson: 190 (1868)
  • Bentham: 411 (1880) as Salicineae
  • Pax: 29 (1888)
  • Fisher: 307 (1928)
  • Wilmot-Dear: 120 (1991)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 2; species ± 550, chiefly of moist or wet habitats, mainly in the cooler parts of the northern temperate and subarctic zones, scarce and chiefly in highland areas in the tropics; absent from Australasia and New Guinea
• Southern Africa: Genera 2 (1 exotic), species ± 6 (including exotics)

References:

• ANDERSSON, N.J. 1868. Salicineae. Salix. In A. de Candolle, Prodromus 16,2. Masson & Sons, Paris
• BENTHAM, G. 1880. Salicineae. In G. Bentham & J.D. Hooker, Genera plantarum 3. Lovell Reeve & Co., London
• FISHER, M.J. 1928. The morphology and anatomy of the flowers of the Salicaceae. American Journal of Botany 15
• LINDLEY, J. 1836. Salicaceae. A natural system of botany, edn 2. Longmans, London
• MIRBEL, C.F.B. DE. 1815. Salicaceae. Eléments de physiologie végétale et de botanique 2. Magimel, Paris
• PAX, F. 1888. Salicaceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien 3,1
• WILMOT-DEAR, C.M. 1991. Salicaceae. Flora zambesiaca 9,6

Resources:

• Key to Salicaceae genera

• Salicaceae genera: