Distribution. Cook’s Inlet, coast of Alaska, and valley of the Yukon River near Dawson southward through western British Columbia to northern California, ranging eastward through Washington and northwestern Oregon to northern Idaho and Montana.
From central California to San Bernardino County represented by the variety _crassijulis_ Andr. (S. _brachystachys_ Benth.) with shorter and broader obovate leaves rounded at apex, pubescent and tomentose branchlets and larger pubescent winter-buds. A tree sometimes 70° high with a trunk often 2½° in diameter.
On the high Sierra Nevada eastward to the eastern ranges of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and to northern New Mexico, northern Wyoming and the Black Hills of South Dakota represented by the var. _flavescens_ Schn. A shrub or rarely a small tree with obovate rounded yellowish leaves and branchlets.
Leaves oblong to oblong-obovate, acute or abruptly acuminate, or rarely rounded and frequently apiculate at apex, gradually narrowed and cuneate or rounded at base, coarsely crenately serrate, especially those on vigorous shoots, or entire, when they unfold villose with pale hairs, or tomentose above and clothed below with silvery white tomentum, at maturity thin and firm, bright yellow-green and lustrous, nearly glabrous or tomentose on the upper surface, pale and glaucous and tomentose or pubescent on the lower surface, especially along the midrib and slender arcuate primary veins and conspicuous reticulate veinlets, 2′—6′ long, 1′—1½′ wide; petioles stout, tomentose, ¼′—⅓′ long. Flowers: aments oblong-cylindric, erect, rather lax, often more or less curved, about 1½′ long, on short tomentose scale-bearing branchlets, the staminate ⅔′ thick and rather thicker than the pistillate; scales oblong-obovate, yellow, coated with long pale hairs, the staminate rounded above and rather shorter than the more acute scales of the pistillate ament persistent under the fruit; stamens 2, with free elongated glabrous filaments; ovary conic, glabrous, stalked, with a slender stalk about one third as long as the scale, gradually narrowed above, with a slender elongated bright red style and broad spreading entire stigmas. Fruit oblong-cylindric, narrowed above, about ¼′ long.