A tree, 25°—50° high, with slender light orange-colored or grayish glabrous or pubescent easily separable branchlets. Bark rough, thick, deeply furrowed, sometimes nearly black.
Distribution. River banks; Reed Creek, Shasta County, and Red Bluff, Tehama County, California, southward in the interior valleys and on the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada to the mountain valleys in the southern part of the state, and to northern Lower California; eastward through central and southern Arizona; in southeastern Nevada; through southern New Mexico to western Texas (El Paso, El Paso County, and Fort Davis, Jeff Davis County); and southward into northern Mexico.
Leaves linear-lanceolate, narrow-elliptic or rarely obovate-lanceolate, acute or short-acuminate, obtusely or acutely cuneate at the base, and finely glandular dentate; when the flowers open more or less pubescent especially below or glabrous, and at maturity green on the upper surface, pale on the lower surface, glabrous, 4′ or 5′ long, ¾′ broad; petioles villose early in the season, becoming glabrous, ¼′ in length, minutely glandular at apex; stipules wanting or minute, semicordate, acute, pubescent on vigorous leading branches and sometimes ¼′ long. Flowers: aments terminal on leafy branchlets, 2½′—3′ in length, their rachis villose-pubescent; scales ovate or ovate-oblong, obtuse or acute; stamens usually 5—7, rarely 3—9; filaments densely villose; ovary ovoid, long-acuminate, glabrous, long-stalked; style short, distinct, 2-lobed. Fruit acuminate and long-pointed, acute at base, ¼′ long and about as long as its pedicel.
A tree, 30°—50° high, with a trunk 10′ or 12′ in diameter, with often pendulous branches, and slender branchlets more or less densely pubescent or tomentose or nearly glabrous when they first appear, becoming glabrous and dark reddish purple in their second season, and easily separable at the joints; often only a large shrub. Bark thick, deeply furrowed, dark red-brown, separating on the surface into small appressed scales.
Distribution. River banks and the borders of swamps; Dismal Swamp, Norfolk County, Virginia; near Goldsboro, Wayne County, North Carolina; common in the coast region of South Carolina and Georgia, extending up the Savannah River at least as far as Augusta, Richmond County, and through southern Georgia to the valley of the Flint River; swamps near Jacksonville, Duval County, and in the neighborhood of Apalachicola, Florida.