Shrubs or trees to 8 m tall; bark brown or yellowish brown. Branchlets brown, grayish white villous or subglabrous. Buds brown, ovoid, downy. Stipules ovate-lanceolate, margin serrate; petiole shortly downy; leaf blade broadly lanceolate, oblanceolate, oblong-lanceolate, or obovate-lanceolate, 5-20 × 2-3.5 cm, abaxially gray silky pubescent, adaxially dirty green, subglabrous, base cuneate, margin entire or glandular serrate, revolute, apex shortly acuminate; lateral veins 10-12 on each side of midvein. Flowering precocious. Male catkin 2.5-4 × ca. 1.8 cm; bracts 2-colored, long pubescent, apex black. Male flower: stamens 2, free, glabrous; anthers yellow. Female catkin cylindric, 4-5.5 × ca. 1.2 cm; bracts as in male catkin. Female flower: gland ca. 3 × as long as stipe; ovary ovoid-conical, villous, shortly stipitate; style long; stigma 2-parted, slightly revolute. Fl. Apr, fr. May. 2n = 76.

A. K. Skvortsov doubts if species grows in the wild in China.

Grown to protect embankments and used for making baskets.

This is treated as Salix gmelinii Pallas in Belyaeva, I. & A. Sennikov. 2008. Typification of Pallas' names in Salix. Kew Bull. 63: 277-287.

Streamsides, riverbanks, lakeshores. Heilongjiang, Jilin, Nei Mongol, Shaanxi, Shandong, Xinjiang [Japan, Mongolia, Russia; Europe]