Many countries in Asia, Europe and America have a long history of cultivation.
Willow branches are slender, soft and drooping, dancing with the wind, graceful and natural, and have been important garden ornamental trees since ancient times.
It is ideal to plant on the banks of rivers and lakes, and can also be used as street trees, shade trees and bank-fixing and dike-protecting trees.
Weeping willows are trees, reaching 18m.
The crown of this tree is a broad oval.
Branchlets slender and drooping.
Leaves lanceolate to linear lanceolate, 8 ~ 16 cm long, apex acuminate, and serrated edges.
The flowers are small, unisexual and dioecious, and the flowering period is March-April.
Capsule, which matures from May to June, usually has white filamentous hairs on its seeds.
Weeping willows like light, warm and humid climate and moist deep acidic and neutral soil.
Cold-resistant, especially resistant to water and humidity, but it can also be born in high drought areas with deep soil layers.
Germination is vigorous, weeping willow root system is developed, germination is vigorous and growth is rapid.
Life expectancy is short, and you will gradually get old after 30 years old.
The annual leaf period of weeping willows is very long, up to 290 days.
It grows 1 ~ 2 times a year, germinates from late February to early March, matures and disperses after flowering from March to April, and enters the peak growth period, which lasts until the end of June. There are few secondary branches in summer and autumn, which are mainly long and lignified, and the leaves fall from late February to1early October of the following year.
Willows and weeping willows are typical types of combined branches, and the molding method is multi-headed trunk, and the molding zone is basically 3 ~ 4 meters.
The dryness of weeping willow is not strong, so attention should be paid to keeping it dry at seedling stage. In addition to retaining the auxiliary branches 2/3 of the height of the tree, it is necessary to peel the buds in time and trim the redundant side branches appropriately.
After the stem is fixed, it grows naturally and retains three strong main branches.
Pruning in winter, choose scattered and robust branches to cut short, and create the first layer of crown structure.
In the second year, the extension branches of the central trunk were cut short, and 3 ~ 4 branches near the cut were cut off at the same time, and the second layer crown structure was selected on the central trunk.
The distribution of skeleton branches should be patchy, the weak ones can be kept, and the strong ones can be cut off.
Because weeping willows have strong ability of sprouting and branching, it is not difficult to cultivate trees, and the cultivation time is only 2 ~ 3 years.
Maintenance pruning for one year 1 time. In addition to sorting out miscellaneous branches, it can also be retracted by properly thinning too dense branches and too thick branches. Because annual branches are slender, they generally don't need to be chopped.
For old and weak trees, the head can be sawed off from the secondary branches for renewal, leaving 3 ~ 4 budding branches as the main branches and cutting off other weak branches.