Salix 'Chrysocoma' it is much hardier and more long-lived than the Babylon Willow ("Salix babylonica"). This particular cultivar is easily distinguished from the other Golden Weeping Willow ("S." × "sepulcralis") by its androgynous catkins. A weeping tree, not much more than 22m high. Bark greyish-brown, deeply fissured. Twigs very slender, at first thinly subadpressed pubescent, soon becoming glabrous. Golden- or greenish-yellow in their first year, later becoming olive-green. Catkins appearing with the leaves in April, terminal on very short, spreading, leafy, lateral shoots, peduncle and rhachis softly villose. Catkins male, female or most commonly androgynous. Salix 'Chrysocoma' "Salix" × "sepulcralis" <nowiki>'Chrysocoma'</nowiki>, or
Salix matsudana female catkins on separate trees. The leaves are narrow, light green, around 4–10 cm long and 1–2 cm broad. The flowers are borne in catkins produced early in the spring The "Flora of China" recognizes three varieties within the species "Salix matsudana:" Many botanists, notably the Russian willow expert Alexei Konstantinovich Skvortsov, treat "Salix matsudana" as a synonym of the Peking willow "Salix babylonica", which, despite its botanical name, is also native to northern China. The only reported difference between the two is that "S. matsudana" has two nectaries in each female flower, whereas "S. babylonica" has only one; however