White Willow
Salix alba
Grief. Divination. Aspirin. The tree knew about pain long before chemistry did.
Overview
The white willow grows at the edges of rivers and in wet meadows, its narrow silver-grey leaves catching light in a way that makes it distinguishable from a distance — a shimmer that identifies it before you can see its shape clearly. It is the source of salicin, the glycoside from which salicylic acid was isolated in 1828 and from which acetylsalicylic acid — aspirin — was synthesised in 1897. The bark had been used to reduce fever and relieve pain for at least four thousand years before any of this chemistry was articulated. The tree knew, in the sense that matters: the folk tradition knew, and those who used it knew, even if no one knew why.
Botanical Notes
A large deciduous tree to 25 metres, with deeply fissured, grey-brown bark and long, narrow, lanceolate leaves, grey-green above and white-silky beneath, giving the tree its characteristic silver appearance in wind. Catkins appear with the leaves in April; male and female on separate trees. Roots aggressive and wide-spreading; plant well away from drains and foundations. Found throughout Europe on river banks, lake margins, and wet meadows, often pollarded or coppiced. The genus Salix contains around 400 species, many hybridising freely; white willow is the largest and most important medicinally. The bark of all willows contains salicin and related compounds at varying concentrations; white willow and crack willow (*S. fragilis*) are highest.
Lore & History
Willows weep, in the European imagination, because grief is the condition most naturally associated with water and with the boundaries it creates. The weeping willow (*S. babylonica*), introduced from China in the eighteenth century, made the association architectural; but it was the native willows — planted at graves, their branches used in mourning garlands, their form bent over rivers as if looking for something lost — that established the emotional vocabulary. In the seventeenth century, rejected or grieving lovers wore willow garlands: Othello imagines Desdemona singing 'the willow song'; Ophelia's fatal branch is willow. In Celtic tradition the willow was associated with the moon, with divination, and with fluid states of consciousness — the dreaming, the trance, the vision at the water's edge. Witches' broomsticks were traditionally made with a willow handle and birch twigs; the wood was also used for cricket bats, a use that has persisted unchanged since the eighteenth century.
Warnings
Safe at medicinal doses. The salicin content makes willow bark an effective anti-inflammatory and analgesic, but aspirin-sensitive individuals — those who react to acetylsalicylic acid — may also react to willow bark preparations. Avoid in children with viral infections (Reye's syndrome risk, as with aspirin). Do not combine with anticoagulant medications without medical guidance. The tree itself presents no hazard; the bark preparations should be used with the same awareness as pharmaceutical salicylates.