Salix sitchensis

What to Eat

Edible parts: Inner bark, Leaves

The inner bark can be eaten raw or cooked, or dried, ground into a powder, and mixed with cereal flour for bread-making. It has a very bitter flavour and is considered a famine food, used only as a last resort. Young shoots can be cooked but are not very palatable.

Known Hazards

Where to Find It

It is a temperate plant.

Australia, Canada, North America, USA,

How to Identify

A deciduous shrub growing to 7 m tall, hardy to UK zone 4. Dioecious; requires both male and female plants for seed production. Adapts to light sandy, medium loamy, and heavy clay soils with mildly acid to neutral pH. Cannot tolerate shade and prefers moist to wet soil conditions.

How to Grow

Succeeds in most soils, including wet, ill-drained or intermittently flooded soils, but prefers a damp, heavy soil in a sunny position. Rarely thrives on chalk. Hybridizes freely with other members of this genus. Although the flowers are produced in catkins early in the year, they are pollinated by bees and other insects rather than by the wind. Plants in this genus are notably susceptible to honey fungus. Dioecious. Male and female plants must be grown if seed is required.

Propagation: Seed must be surface sown as soon as it ripens in late spring, as viability is very short — perhaps only a few days. Cuttings of mature wood from the current year's growth can be taken November to February and rooted in a sheltered outdoor bed or planted directly into their permanent position with a good weed-suppressing mulch; this is very easy. Plant out in autumn. Half-ripe cuttings taken June to August and rooted in a frame are also very easy.

Medicinal Uses

A concoction made from boiled bark is used as a tonic. The bark can also be pounded and applied directly to wounds as a healing agent. An infusion of the stems has been used to treat stomach complaints. The fresh bark contains salicin, which likely breaks down into salicylic acid (closely related to aspirin) in the body, functioning as an anodyne and febrifuge.

Other Uses

The plant succeeds in wet, poorly drained, or intermittently flooded soils. Its flexible stems are used in basket making, with plants typically coppiced annually or every two years for thicker upright poles. The roots have also been used to make baskets. The bark can be peeled, twisted, and used for cordage. The wood is light, soft, and close-grained, and is used for fuel. The plant is a dynamic accumulator.

Salix sitchensis is a species of willow known by the common name Sitka willow. It is native to northwestern North America from Alaska to northern California to Montana. It is a common to abundant plant in many types of coastal and inland wetland habitat, such as marshes, riverbanks, swamps, coastal sand dunes, and mountain springs.

Notes

There are about 300 Salix species.

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