babylonica f. umbraculifera ‘Navajo’

‘Navajo’ is a naturalized willow that was spread about by former Governor of New Mexico Tom Bolack. This is one of our more drought-tolerant willows. If you live in the southwest or similar climate look no further. New growth provides numerous catkins which draw pollinators from all around. Once grown, it has a beautiful rounded top. This hardy willow makes for an excellent ornamental that has proven to thrive in a myriad of different locations.

The paths that willow travel are rarely documented, so this story is very much a treat! Thank you, Sports Illustrated 1970! The full article can be found in that link. Below is a truncated version pertaining only to the willow:

A modern Johnny Appleseed
To repay his debt to the land, a wealthy ex-governor of New Mexico makes things grow, including swamps, game—and a very special tree

Virginia Craft

In cowboy boots, string tie and ten-gallon Stetson he appeared oddly out of place at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. And from the way he hovered over the six big cardboard boxes that accompanied him, protecting them from customary airport abuse, it was obvious he was guarding some very special cargo. It was special; Tom Bolack, oilman, rancher and former governor of New Mexico, had traveled halfway across the country to plant the first Navajo willow trees in the state of New York.

Tom Bolack has been planting Navajo willows in New Mexico—and lately, in other parts of the U.S.—for almost 20 years. Like those he was to plant in Carmel, N.Y., all the Navajo willows now growing in the U.S. stem from a single giant tree. It was brought from China by a returning missionary almost 100 years ago and planted on the Navajo Indian Reservation near Bolack’s home city of Farmington, N. Mex.

In 1957, when Bolack bought the initial 350 acres of what is now his 3,000-acre B-Square Ranch adjoining Farmington, his first act was to establish a full-scale nursery and stock it with shoots from the original tree. In the 13 years since, the B-Square has produced almost a million Navajo willows, and Bolack has given away more than half that number to schools, churches, municipalities, colleges and hospitals. In a single year, in New Mexico alone, B-Square has donated some 50,000 trees worth more than $200,000 as part of its private campaign to “keep New Mexico green.”

The trees now grow as far south as Vero Beach, Fla. and as far north as North Dakota. In most places the willows have been used to reforest barren lands, but last year the trees were planted to landscape the outside of Dodger Stadium at Chavez Ravine.

The planting in New York was for still another reason. The trees were a memorial to a young teacher, Diane Gorman, who died last spring after an automobile accident while en route to the Kent Elementary School in Carmel, N.Y. When Bolack was asked if he would provide a memorial tree for each of the children in her third-grade class, he not only agreed but insisted on bringing them himself. At the school he supervised the planting and then led the dedication to the young teacher he had not known.