Salix caprea × S. viminalis (S.
× smithiana Willd. = S. × sericans
Tausch ex A. Kerner), Broad-leaved Osier

Introduction, archaeophyte, deliberately planted and possibly also rarely occurring spontaneously; rare but probably under-recorded.

1949; MCM & D; laneway by Lough Melvin near Garrison.

June to November.

This erect hybrid shrub or small tree is very variable and therefore difficult to distinguish from S. × holosericea Willd. (Silky-leaved Osier), the cross between S. viminalis (Osier) and S. cinerea subsp. oleifolia (Rusty Willow). This means it is very probably under-recorded in areas of B & I where basket canes were previously cultivated (Meikle 1984). The previous confusion in the application of the name S. × smithiana was resolved by Larsson (1995). In our Fermanagh Flora Database, we have a total of 14 records of S. × smithiana in separate tetrads, but in comparison only seven records of S. × holosericea.

S. × smithiana is thinly and widely scattered across damp lowland areas of Fermanagh, growing in roadside and laneway hedgerows, stream-sides, rock outcrops and lakeshores. As also noted in the account of S. × holosericea, these hybrids probably arise rarely and spontaneously whenever the parent species happen to occur together. Like S. viminalis itself, however, they may often be relicts or escapes from previously planted imports in cane cultivation plots. One of the Fermanagh S. × smithiana sites, south of the road at Kilturk, contained a collection of around a dozen large shrubs of this hybrid, which suggested that this patch of ground might originally have been one of the small, local, cane plantations referred to as a 'sally garden'.

The FNEI 3 regarded S. × smithiana as "widespread", and the editors commented that, after S. viminalis, this hybrid is (or was) the commonest basket willow in the region of that Flora. Their text follows this remark by listing just one station in Co Down (H38), three in Co Antrim (H39), but as many as 15 from Co Londonderry (H40).

The New Atlas map and that in Stace et al. (2015) indicate that S. × smithiana is very widely, but rather patchily, distributed throughout B & I. It occurs spontaneously with or without both or one of its parent species, appearing in hedgerows, thickets and waste ground. It also is found as relicts of cultivation, surviving in or near more or less obvious osier plantations, their remnants or, increasingly nowadays, their modern reconstructions. Previously, S. × smithiana was valued for coarse heavy-duty basketry, eg of the type used for turf (peat fuel) creels, thatch ties and manure carriers. Lately, interest in this hybrid has reawakened and it is now considered suitable for short-rotation biomass production (G. Hutchinson, in: Preston et al. 2002).