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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-140
White Willow
Salix alba
White Willow is a fast-growing waterside tree that pays for its space in chicken and goat feed - its dried leaves run about 17 percent crude protein, rated as good as alfalfa for poultry, and it tolerates being cut back hard again and again for cut-and-carry fodder. Its bark contains salicin, the compound aspirin is built from, long used for pain and fever, and its flexible young shoots are a traditional material for baskets and charcoal and a rooting aid for cuttings of other plants. It needs steady moisture and full to partial sun, but its aggressive, moisture-seeking roots make it dangerous within about 50 feet of septic lines, water mains, foundations or driveways, and it can take over a pond margin if left uncut.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 2–9
- Soil
- Sand · Silt · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Well-Drained · Moderate · Wet
Vertical layer
Canopy- Soil pH
- 5–8
- Plant type
- Deciduous Tree
- Mature height
- 50–70 ft
- Mature spread
- 40–70 ft
- Plant spacing
- 60 ft
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- Seed
Keep exploring
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Ulmus americana
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
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- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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