koreensis

In the summers of 2016-17 I assisted the Montreal Botanic Garden with the nomenclature of some of their willows and realized their Salix koreensis was extremely similar to our ‘Hakuro’ (which I received erroneously as a selection of Salix integra and which has leaves opposite each other on the stems, not alternate like koreensis). I was allowed to take cuttings to compare the two and sure enough the similarities were just too close to ignore. I grew these cuttings on and verified that the two were the same species with ‘Hakuro’ being a unique selection. Now we have added the species to the list of willows we offer. I haven’t seen it flower yet so I can’t tell you anything about the flowers–I will revisit the MBG to fill in this lack of information. It makes a fine specimen tree and will to grow to 65 ft tall when mature in its native  countries: China, Japan, Korea, Eastern Russia and Mongolia. The tree in the Montreal BG is about half that size. The leaves are long lanceolate, with small glands on the serrate edges; the undersides of the leaves are glaucous.