Shrubs or small trees. Branchlets yellowish green to yellowish red, pilose or glabrous. Stipules semiorbicular, apex acute; petiole ca. 1 cm; leaf blade ovate-oblong, broadly ovate to obovate-oblong 5-7 × 2.5-4 cm, slightly thick, abaxially tomentose or downy, adaxially dull green, wrinkled, more conspicuously so when fresh, glabrous, base rounded, margin irregularly notched, dentate, or subentire, usually slightly recurved, apex acute or apiculate, usually contorted; reticulate veins conspicuous abaxially. Flowering precocious. Male catkin ellipsoid or broadly ellipsoid, 1.5-2.5 × ca. 1.5 cm, sessile; bracts 2-colored, light proximally, black distally, lanceolate, ca. 2 mm, long pubescent. Male flower: gland adaxial; stamens 2, distinct; filaments 6-8 mm, slender; anthers yellow, oblong. Female catkin shortly cylindric, ca. 2 × 0.8-1 cm, to 6 × 1.8 cm in fruit, shortly pedunculate; bracts as in male catkin. Female flower: gland as in male flowers; ovary narrowly conical, 2.5-3 mm, downy; stipe ca. 2 mm; style short; stigma 2-4-lobed. Capsule to 9 mm. Fl. Apr, fr. May-Jun. 2n = 38.

Specimens of Salix sinica from N and NW China have been misidentified as this species. Salix caprea differs from S. sinica follows: leaves thick, pubescent; filaments longer, 6-7 × as long as than bracts; ovary slightly longer than stipe.

Mountain slopes, woods. Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Nei Mongol [N Asia, Europe]