Salix alba 'Chermesina' - 80cm-120cm

Salix alba 'Chermesina' or Scarlet Willow this is a spectacular, fast-growing deciduous cultivar of the native White Willow. Highly celebrated by garden designers and landscapers, it acts as a phenomenal winter anchor, prized for producing vibrant, electric orange-red to blazing scarlet young twigs. While the standard pussy willow (Salix caprea) is grown for its soft early catkins, 'Chermesina' is planted specifically to paint the bleak winter landscape with the illusion of flickering fire.

Key Features

• Vibrant Winter Bark: The absolute standout feature. The young shoots from the previous growing season turn a striking, glowing neon orange-red to scarlet in the bare winter months, intensifying in color as spring approaches. 
• Growth & Pruning Habit: If left to grow naturally, it forms a medium-to-large tree reaching 10 to 18 metres tall with a broad, capricious crown. However, gardeners usually prune it back hard every 1 to 2 years to a structural framework (pollard stub), keeping it completely manageable for small or medium gardens. 
• Foliage: Narrow, lanceolate dark green leaves covered in fine, silvery hairs on the underside. This causes the canopy to flicker and "shimmer" beautifully in the summer wind before turning clear yellow in autumn. 
• Flowers: Because it is a selected male cultivar, it produces showy, 5-cm-long bright yellow catkins in April. These erupt on bare stems before or alongside the emerging leaves and do not produce messy seeds or fluff. 
• Trunk: Develops a grey-brown trunk with deep, corky grooves as it matures.

Growing Conditions

• Sunlight: Requires full sun. Abundant sunlight is mandatory to bake the wood and synthesize the intense scarlet winter bark pigment.
• Soil Type & pH: Thrives across almost all soil types, successfully navigating heavy clay, loam, sand, and highly calcareous or alkaline profiles.
• Moisture & Flooding Limits: Prefers moist, wet, or damp conditions. It possesses an elite tolerance for prolonged waterlogging and seasonal flooding, making it an ideal choice for stabilizing riverbanks or planting alongside large ponds. Once established, it shows surprising tolerance to short-term dryness, though it struggles in hot, dry, sandy soils.
• Hardiness & Exposure: Exceptionally winter-hardy (Zone 4, handling temperatures well below -20°C). It has great wind resistance and air pollution tolerance, making it suitable for exposed rural shelterbelts or urban avenue planting.
• Pruning Schedule: To maintain the brilliant display, suppliers advise coppicing or pollarding the tree hard in late winter or early March. Cutting back to about two buds of the previous year's growth forces a massive explosion of long, straight, brightly colored juvenile stems for the following winter.

Wildlife Value

• Early Pollinator Lifeline: The prominent yellow catkins emerge early in the spring when few other plants are in bloom. They provide a vital high-volume nectar and pollen source (rated 5 out of 5) that actively feeds waking queen bumblebees, solitary bees, and early butterflies.
• Larval Host Plant: Functions as a critical primary host plant for various invertebrates. The foliage actively sustains the caterpillars of numerous native moths and specialized butterflies.
• Aquatic Protection: When planted along waterways, its extensive, fibrous shallow root network acts as a structural anchor that prevents bank erosion. The overhanging branches shade the water to control temperatures, providing sanctuary and a steady drop of insects for aquatic life.
• Nesting Cover: If left to grow into a multi-stemmed shrub or broad tree, the dense, flexible, and waving branches provide secure nesting materials and concealment for wetland songbirds.