Shrubs or small trees, to 6 m tall. Branchlets purplish red

or chestnut colored, slender, pilose, rarely subglabrous or glabrous. Buds ovoid, apex tomentose and obtuse. Stipules very small, caducous; petiole short; leaf blade linear or linear-lanceolate, 2-6 cm × 2-4(-7) mm, tomentose when young, becoming pilose abaxially, margin serrulate, rarely subentire. Flowering coetaneous. Catkins dense, on 1-year-old branchlets. Male catkin subsessile; bracts yellowish or yellowish green, ovate or long ovate, glabrous or pilose. Male flower: stamens 2, connate throughout, glabrous; anthers at first red, becoming yellow, globose. Female catkin thinly terete, 2-3 cm, elongate in fruit, shortly pedunculate, with leaflets at base; bracts yellowish green, ovate, base downy. Female flower: gland adaxial; ovary ovoid, densely gray tomentose or glabrous, sessile; style short; stigma entire or 2-parted. Fl. May, fr. Jun.

Along rivers in desert and semidesert regions, plains, alongside irrigation canals and ditches. Gansu, Nei Mongol, Ningxia, Xinjiang [India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan; SW Asia, Europe].