Leaves oblong-obovate to oblong-elliptic or lanceolate, acuminate and short-pointed or acute at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate or rounded at base, remotely and irregularly serrate usually only above the middle, or rarely entire, when they unfold pale gray-green, glabrous or villose, and often tinged with red on the upper surface and coated on the lower with pale tomentum or pubescence, at maturity thick and firm, dull green and glabrous or puberulous above, blue or silvery white and covered with pale rufous pubescence below, especially along the midrib, veins, and conspicuous reticulate veinlets, 1′—3′ long, ½′—1′ wide; petioles slender, often pubescent, reddish, ¼′—½′ long; stipules foliaceous, semicordate, glandular-dentate, sometimes nearly ½′ long on vigorous shoots, deciduous. Flowers: aments terminal on short leafy branchlets; scales ovate or oblong, rounded at apex, broader on the staminate than on the pistillate plant, yellow below, rose color at apex, villose with long pale silky hairs, persistent under the fruit; staminate aments cylindric, obovoid, narrowed at base, densely flowered, ¾′—1′ long, ½′—1′ thick; pistillate aments oblong-cylindric, loosely flowered, 1′—1¼′ long, ½′ thick; stamens 2, with free glabrous filaments; ovary cylindric, villose; with long silky white hairs, gradually narrowed at apex, with broad sessile entire or emarginate spreading yellow stigmas; pedicel villose, about ¼′ in length, and about as long as the scale. Fruit elongated-cylindric, gradually narrowed into a long thin beak, and raised on a slender stalk sometimes ½′ long.
A bushy tree, occasionally 25° high, with a short trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, stout ascending branches forming a broad round head, and slender branchlets coated at first with hoary deciduous tomentum, varying during their first winter from reddish purple to dark orange-brown, marked by scattered raised lenticels and roughened by conspicuous elevated leaf-scars, growing lighter-colored and reddish brown in their second year; usually much smaller and often shrubby in habit. Bark thin, reddish or olive-green or gray tinged with red, and slightly divided by shallow fissures into appressed plate-like scales. Winter-buds oblong, gradually narrowed and rounded at apex, full and rounded on the back, bright light chestnut-brown, nearly ¼′ long.