Salix kusanoi (Hayata) C. K. Schneid.

Trees to 6 m tall. One-year-old branchlets purplish red-black, glabrous; juvenile branchlets gray and brown downy. Buds purplish red, ovoid-conical, subglabrous. Petiole long; leaf blade ovate or ovate-elliptic, ca. 9 × 4 cm, abaxially light or slightly pale, at first brown silky, glabrescent except along veins, adaxially grass green, brown silky along midvein, base rounded, obtuse, or subcordate, rarely subauriculate, margin entire, apex acute or acuminate; lateral veins 16 or 17 on each side of midvein. Flowering precocious or coetaneous, rarely serotinous. Male catkin cylindric, 8(-9) cm; peduncle with 2 or 3 leaflets or leaflets deciduous; bracts ovate or broadly elliptic, pubescent. Male flower: adaxial and abaxial glands usually 2-cleft; stamens 5 or 6; filaments pubescent at base. Female catkin ca. 3 × 1 cm, pedunculate; bracts as in male catkin. Female flower: glands adaxial and abaxial, retuse or lobed at apex; ovary ovoid-conical, 3-4 mm, long stipitate; style nearly absent; stigma crownlike.

* Riversides. Taiwan

Salix tetrasperma Roxburgh var. kusanoi Hayata, J. Coll. Sci. Imp. Univ. Tokyo 30(1): 305. 1911; Pleiarina kusanoi (Hayata) N. Chao & G. T. Gong; S. suishaensis Hayata.

Salix kusanoi is a species of willow in the family Salicaceae. It is endemic to Taiwan. It is threatened by habitat loss.

It is a deciduous tree growing to 7 m (23 ft) tall. The leaves are alternate, 9 cm long and 4 cm broad, with finely serrated edge and glands. Both sides of the leaves are green and have dark orange fine hairs. The hairs on the underside of the leaves are more obvious, and the hairs can be easily wiped off. The flowers are produced in early spring before the new leaves appear. It is dioecious, with male and female catkins on separate plants. The male catkins are 8–9 cm long; the female catkins are 3 cm long.

Male catkins with golden yellow flowers

Leaf. Leaf bases are often heart-shaped.

The fine hairs on the leaves

Young leaves

Branches and leaves

Bark of a young plant

Young plant with male flowers