Topic summary
Dwarf willow
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Salix herbacea.
Description
The dwarf willow is one of the smallest woody plants in the world. It typically grows to only 1–6 centimetres (1⁄2–2+1⁄2 inches) in height, with spreading prostrate branches, reddish brown and very sparsely hairy at first, growing just underground forming open mats. The leaves are deciduous, rounded, crenate to toothed and shiny green with paler undersides, 0.3–2 cm long and broad. Like other willows, it is dioecious, with male and female catkins on separate plants. As a result, the plant's appearance varies; the female catkins are red-coloured when ripe, while the male catkins are yellow-coloured. In colder biomes with habitat fragmentation, geographic isolation, and heterogeneous availability of resources, the dwarf willow often exhibits clonal propagation of genets in which ramets are physiologically integrated and thereby share resources. Some genets of the dwarf willow in the Northern Apennines in Italy are at least 2000 years old.