# interior sandbar willow

*Salix interior*

Broken twigs carried downstream by floods can easily take root in mud, allowing the plant to clone itself miles away.

- **Taxonomy:** Plantae › Tracheophyta › Magnoliopsida › Malpighiales › Salicaceae › Salix
- **IUCN Red List status:** Least Concern
- **Population trend:** stable
- **Biome:** wetland
- **Habitat:** Riparian zones, sandbars, riverbanks, floodplains, and moist alluvial soils.
- **Diet:** Autotrophic (photosynthesis; requires abundant sunlight and water).
- **Range:** North America, United States, Canada
- **Size:** Dense shrub growing 2 to 10 meters (6 to 33 feet) tall with narrow, lance-shaped leaves.
- **Lifespan:** 20-30 years for individual stems; clonal colonies can persist for much longer.
- **Active:** diurnal
- **Threats:** River channelization, water flow regulation, invasive species, and loss of natural flooding cycles.
- **Safe to approach?:** Harmless. Safe to approach and touch. Avoid breaking branches as they are vital for soil stabilization. During spring, be mindful of stinging insects like bees that are heavily attracted to its pollen-rich catkins.

## Sources

- Plate: https://gaia-dex.com/species/de04171d-6fed-4864-bd7c-fa8d09c00cd7
- iNaturalist: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/131125

- Conservation status: IUCN Red List category, as recorded by Gaia-Dex
- Photo: https://inaturalist-open-data.s3.amazonaws.com/photos/1689270/medium.jpg (Harvey Barrison, CC-BY-SA, via iNaturalist)

Habitat, diet, size and similar notes are AI-written summaries; check them against the linked sources before relying on them.