Salix alba Golden Ness - White Willow

Salix alba 'Golden Ness' is a cultivar of White Willow appreciated for its amber-coloured stems. It forms a medium-sized tree, but it is often grown as a bushy shrub, controlled by pruning. Its golden-yellow new shoots shine in winter and its green foliage turns yellow in autumn before falling and revealing the vibrant stems. Pruning reduces it to a 2m tall shrub and has the advantage of producing more colourful stems for winter display. This variety derived from Salix alba var. vitellina has a flexible wood. It has been awarded the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.

Native to wet areas of the Northern Hemisphere, particularly Europe, temperate Asia, and North Africa, Salix alba is a highly adaptable tree with rapid growth that can reach 20m in height and 10-12m in width. It belongs to the Salicaceae family and the Salix genus, which includes no less than 300 species distributed in the cold regions of the Northern Hemisphere. 'Golden Ness' is derived from the subspecies vitellina with soft, yellow wood. It has a generally rounded habit, with the tree developing one or several trunks topped by a very wide crown. The long, flexible branches are coppery-yellow and hairy when young, then they become more grey. They bear deciduous leaves that are 10cm long, narrow, and lanceolate in shape. Both sides of the leaf are silky, with the upper side being shiny and deep green and the underside white-silver. They turn yellow before falling in autumn. Flowering occurs in April-May, at the same time as the young leaves appear. The male catkins are thin, 3-5cm long, arched and spreading, and yellowish. The female catkins are smaller, denser, and green. The bark of this tree becomes greyish-brown with age, longitudinally fissured, and takes on a corky appearance. It has a powerful tap-root and extensively spreading roots, perfectly adapted to deep and unstable soils. For this reason, it is advisable to keep this willow away from ducts. White willow is also a medicinal plant, with its bark being the original source of aspirin. The Salix alba can reach the venerable age of 100 years.

The 'Golden Ness' willow is often pruned to maintain a bushy shrub size. Regularly pruned and planted closely together, it can form a beautiful windbreak hedge at the edge of the garden. Its silvery foliage is valuable for bringing light to a darker setting, for example at the countryside borders. Among the plants that can accompany it near water, you can find horsetails, reeds, loosestrifes, daylilies, Scirpus, and Typha angustifolia, for example.

Tips: Collect the fallen leaves in autumn and burn them if the tree shows black spots (anthracnose) or yellow-orange spots (rust) during its growth. Once all the leaves have fallen, treat with Bordeaux mixture.