Salix lucidaMuhl.

Shining Willowshining willow

WFO wfo-0000930001 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Salix lucida, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma
fig. a Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-05 / obs. 162114851

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 36 botanical countries

Regions where Salix lucida is native: Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Labrador, Maine, Manitoba, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Brunswick, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Newfoundland, North Dakota, Nova Scotia, Ohio, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Prince Edward I., Québec, Rhode I., Saskatchewan, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming ConnecticutIllinoisIndianaIowaLabradorMaineManitobaMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaNew BrunswickNew HampshireNew JerseyNew YorkNewfoundlandNorth DakotaNova ScotiaOhioOntarioPennsylvaniaPrince Edward I.QuébecSaskatchewanSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasUtahVermontWashingtonWest VirginiaWisconsinWyoming DelawareRhode I.
Native distribution of Salix lucida, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Connecticut CNT NORTHERN AMERICA
Delaware DEL
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Iowa IOW
Labrador LAB
Maine MAI
Manitoba MAN
Maryland MRY
Massachusetts MAS
Michigan MIC
Minnesota MIN
New Brunswick NBR
New Hampshire NWH
New Jersey NWJ
New York NWY
Newfoundland NFL
North Dakota NDA
Nova Scotia NSC
Ohio OHI
Ontario ONT
Pennsylvania PEN
Prince Edward I. PEI
Québec QUE
Rhode I. RHO
Saskatchewan SAS
South Carolina SCA
South Dakota SDA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Utah UTA
Vermont VER
Washington WAS
West Virginia WVA
Wisconsin WIS
Wyoming WYO

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 193 in flower of 689 examined

Proportion of examined Salix lucida in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 1 5 20% 4% to 62%
Feb 0 1 too few examined
Mar 12 12 100% 76% to 100%
Apr 72 85 85% 76% to 91%
May 83 143 58% 50% to 66%
Jun 19 121 16% 10% to 23%
Jul 4 115 3% 1% to 9%
Aug 1 98 1% 0% to 6%
Sep 0 60 0% 0% to 6%
Oct 1 40 3% 0% to 13%
Nov 0 7 0% 0% to 35%
Dec 0 2 too few examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Salix lucida observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 193 of 689 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 2 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 529 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -19.7 °C -13.3 °C -8.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 21.1 °C 24.2 °C 26.2 °C
Annual rainfall 790 mm 1,006 mm 1,418 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 97 mm 198 mm 290 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 529 research-grade observations of Salix lucida that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 9 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Diplima lucida (Muhl.) Raf.
  • Diplusion lucida Raf.
  • Pleiarina lucida (Muhl.) N.Chao & G.T.Gong
  • Salix arguta-erythrocoma Andersson
  • Salix lucida f. pilosa Andersson
  • Salix lucida var. angustifolia Andersson
  • Salix lucida var. intonsa Fernald
  • Salix lucida var. lucida
  • Salix pentandra var. lucida (Muhl.) Kuntze

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.