Shrubs or small trees, to 5 m tall. Branchlets grayish black or reddish black, at first tomentose, glabrescent. Buds villous. Petiole very short; leaf blade linear, linear-oblanceolate, or oblanceolate, 2.5-3.5(-6) cm × 3-5(-1) mm, abaxially grayish white, densely sericeous, adaxially green, pilose, base attenuate, rarely obtuse, margin glandular serrate distally, revolute, apex acuminate or apiculate; midvein raised abaxially. Flowering coetaneous. Male catkin 1.5-2.3 cm × 3-4 mm, subsessile, with 2 or 3 leaflets at base; bracts obovate-oblong, base downy, apex obtuse or retuse. Male flower: gland narrowly oblong, rarely 2-lobed; stamens 2, connate throughout, glabrous; anthers yellow, 4-loculed. Fruiting catkin to 2.5 cm; bracts suborbicular. Female flower: gland narrowly oblong; ovary ovoid or ovoid-cylindric, densely pilose or glabrous, sessile or shortly stipitate; stigma small. Capsule ca. 3 mm. Fl. Apr-May, fr. May.

Very similar to Salix wilhelmsiana; the two species may, in the broad sense, be conspecific.

* Riverbanks, streamsides, or cultivated; 700-3000 m. Gansu, Hebei, Henan, Nei Mongol, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Sichuan, Xizang, Yunnan