Salix integra var. albo-maculata 'Hakuro Nishiki'

Salix integra 'Hakuro Nishiki', the dappled willow, is an elegant small willow grown above all for the show its new growth makes in spring. As the shoots unfold, the glossy leaves emerge splashed and mottled in pink and creamy white, so freely that the whole plant reads as a soft cloud of blossom-pink from a distance, before the variegation settles to green and white through summer. The Japanese cultivar name, roughly white-dappled brocade, catches the effect exactly.

The species behind the selection is native to Japan, Korea, and neighboring East Asia, a fast, easy, water-loving willow, and the dappled form keeps all that vigor. Small, insignificant catkins appear in spring with the leaves, but no one grows this plant for the flowers; the foliage is the whole point, and a hard prune in late winter forces the brightest, pinkest new growth on vigorous fresh wood. Many gardeners grow the plant as a shrub, though nurseries also graft it high onto a stem to make a small mop-headed standard.

Like the whole willow tribe, the dappled willow carries salicin in the bark, the compound behind the family's ancient medicinal reputation and the distant chemical ancestor of aspirin, a thread set out in the fields below. That heritage sits quietly behind what is, in the garden, purely an ornamental plant.

Fast and forgiving, Salix integra 'Hakuro Nishiki' makes a wonderful waterside cover, a bright informal hedge, or a foliage accent for a moist, sunny to lightly shaded spot, lovely reflected at a pond edge or lighting a damp corner where darker leaves would sink. Give steady moisture, cut back hard each late winter for the best color, and let the pink-and-white spring flush do the work that flowers do for other shrubs.