Salix is the Latin name for willow.

It is a genus with 300 species and a wide variety of sizes and shapes - from large trees up to 40 meters in height and width, to shrubs, to flat-growing alpine and polar small trees. Most of them are large, picturesque landscape designers in floodplains, along streams, rivers, lake shores, ponds and as mourning trees in cemeteries or as pioneer trees. They can live to be 200 years old and are deciduous.

They are also used in engineering and biological construction projects in hydraulic engineering, bank, embankment and erosion protection on steep slopes and coastal dunes.

Widely used in sagas, legends, tales and mysticism, e.g. witches' tales and witches' brooms etc.; also used as symbolic trees by the Celts and Greeks.

Willows are suitable as pioneer trees. It is robust, somewhat susceptible to breakage, hardy, resistant to urban climates, hardy, fast-growing, moisture-tolerant in the event of waterlogging and flooding.

The wood is light and soft, elastic and durable, e.g. for furniture, wooden shoes, tool handles or wickerwork for baskets.

Medicines derived from willow trees have been around since ancient times (salicylic acid). The description of effects can be found from Hippocrates to Hildegard von Bingen. The use of bark to reduce fever or as an analgesic, e.g. for rheumatism, was particularly well known.