Salix koriyanagi ‘Rubykins’

The willows gave the world its first painkiller. Salix bark, steeped by Greek and Native healers alike for fever and ache, carries salicin, the compound nineteenth-century chemists refined into salicylic acid and, in time, aspirin, which still wears the genus name buried in its own. This particular willow comes by a quieter trade. Salix koriyanagi is the Korean basket willow, koriyanagi meaning simply that, long grown across Korea, Japan, and China for its slender rods, woven into baskets and furniture by hands that wanted something straight, supple, and strong.

'Rubykins' is a red-flowered female selection of that old working species, made by the Illinois willow man Bill Wandell, and she keeps the basket willow's virtues while adding a show. In earliest spring, ahead of the leaves, she lines her bare stems with small ruby catkins set in neat opposite pairs, an arrangement most willows never trouble with. The foliage follows, narrow and lance-shaped, flushed pink as it opens and settling to a cool blue-green that holds all season. Come the cold the bare branches turn a warm yellow, so there is something to look at in nearly every month she is out of flower.

She wants her feet damp, happiest at a pond edge, a rain garden, or any low wet corner, and she answers a hard yearly coppice by throwing long pliant rods, good for weaving or for cutting an armful of catkins for the late-winter table. A willow that earns her keep three seasons running and turns ruby in the fourth, which is more than most shrubs of her size will promise you.

Standing on: Salix koriyanagi is native to the Korean Peninsula, introduced to Japan, and used primarily for making baskets and furniture; synonyms place it close to Salix purpurea. 'Rubykins' is a red-flowered female selection made by Bill Wandell of Illinois; the species has leaves in pairs or whorls of three (unlike most willows), and is usually coppiced. It is a slow-growing, compact deciduous shrub with bright red catkins (to ½ inch) in early spring, narrow bluish-green leaves, and yellow branches in winter, suited to moist landscapes. The salicin-to-aspirin lineage of the genus Salix is well established.

Photos courtesy of Lakeshore Willows and Missouri Botanical Garden