Plant · P-920

Purple Osier Willow

Salix purpurea

Purple Osier Willow is a fast-growing deciduous shrub, upright and rounded, whose flexible young stems are cut back hard for basketry, hurdle-making and living fences. Its bark carries salicin, the compound behind aspirin, and its dense root system helps hold streambanks and wet ground in place. It grows in full sun to partial shade on soils from sandy to heavy clay, preferring neutral to slightly alkaline ground, thrives in consistently moist to intermittently flooded soil and performs poorly where the ground dries out. It roots readily from cuttings and fallen stems and produces wind- and water-borne seed, so a stray stem or seedling left unmanaged can start a new colony well beyond where it was planted.