Shrubs to 1-2 m tall. Two-year-old branchlets stout, with conspicuous angles and nodes, dull purplish red, glabrous, smooth, shiny. Leaves very small at anthesis, mature leaves unknown; leaf blade elliptic, rarely narrowly elliptic, abaxially densely white sericeous-pubescent, appressed, shiny, glabrescent, adaxially green, glabrous or downy along veins, margin entire. Flowering precocious, rarely nearly coetaneous. Male catkin thick, 2-2.5 × ca. 1.6 cm, sessile; bracts nearly obdeltoid, ca. 4 mm, submembranous, abaxially with dense, long, white hairs, adaxially subglabrous, apex subtruncate, dentate, 3-veined. Male flower: glands adaxial and abaxial; stamens 2; filaments distinct, ca. 8 mm, base downy; anthers yellow or partly red, ellipsoid. Female catkin 3.5-4.5(-8) × 1.3-1.6 cm; bracts as in male catkin. Female flower: gland adaxial; ovary conical-ovoid, ca. 3.5 mm, downy, shortly stipitate; style long, 2-parted; stigma entire. Capsule unknown. Fl. Jun.

Similar to Salix bistyla but leaf blade indistinctly veined abaxially when young; catkins lateral, sessile, leafless; flowering precocious.

Streamsides; 3700-4500 m. Xizang, NW Yunnan [Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sikkim]