purpurea ‘Bleu’

This French selection of the Violet Willow gets its name from the blue color of the leaves (the spelling ‘Bleu’ is not a typo, it’s French). It is one of the most attractive willows we grow. Grows up to 12ft tall and has delicious slender rods are really great and are produced in abundance. A real winner, I believe it’s the best purpurea we offer! We doubled our planting of stock plants so hopefully we’ll have enough for everyone including me to make a living structure with!  Purpurea varieties are best when coppiced yearly to encourage lots of young stems. The 6-10ft long slender rods are very useful for basket makers and graceful living structures. Coppicing results in remarkably colored foliage of red and green. Stems turn from red to a more purple shade and the leaves darken. The showy female catkins appear early in the year before the leaves open. .

Basket makers Europe and Canada offer this as a hybrid between purpurea and daphnoides, but there are no characteristics that would indicate that. Unfortunately some basketmakers play fast and loose with plant names confusing an already difficult task of keeping track of the plethora of Salix cultivar names; this is what happened with the name ‘Purple Dicks’!  I managed to locate the culprit on this one! I checked with the French National School of Agriculture and Basketry to find out more about this selection but got no reply!