Bio Diversity Park

Common Name : Indian Willow

Hindi Name : बेद लैला | Scientific Name : Salix tetrasperma
Family : Salicaceae
Uses : In Manipur, in North-east India, the new flowers of Indian Willow, locally known as Ooyum, lightly boiled and mixed with mashed boiled potatoes, and are considered delicious. Its bark has been used in traditional medicine in many countries to alleviate pain, fever, and inflammation. They are used for many economic purposes as production of timber, paper, fences, shelter, snowshoes, arrow shafts, fish traps, whistles, nets, rope, as a biomass fuel (a source of renewable energy), for ornamental, architectural and horticulture uses. Also, they are used for environmental enhancement through soil erosion control. Willow twigs are elastic and were used to interweave baskets, for caning, and to manufacture woven fences and other lattices.
Native: Indian Subcontinent to China and W. & Central Malesia
General Description:

Indian Willow is a medium sized tree of wet and swampy places, shedding the leaves at the end of monsoon. It flowers after leafing. The bark is rough, with deep, vertical fissures. The young shoots and young leaves are silky. The leaves are lance-like, or ovate-lance like, 8-15 cm long, with minutely and regularly toothed margins. The male sweet scented catkins are 5-10 cm long, and are borne on leafy branchlets. The female catkins are 8-12 cms long. Flowers unisexual, in axillary catkins, to 6 cm long, minutely silky villous; male yellowish; female greenish; bracts ovate, 2 x 2 mm, densely woolly; perianth absent; stamens 5-12, unequal, free, with 2 glands at the base; anthers basifixed; disc yellow, ovary stalked, superior, 1-celled, ovoid, 4-6 ovuled; stigma 2, branched again. Fruit a capsule, 4 mm, 2-4 valved; seeds 1-4, oblong, with long deciduous hairs. The capsules are long, stipulate, in groups of 3 to 4. Flowering: January-February.