This European willow has been freely planted throughout the state and is found more commonly as an escape, I believe, because the branchlets are very easily broken off by wind and ice and scattered where they are covered with soil and easily propagate. I recall the ingenious use of this species by a farmer in Wayne County who, about 1857, had planted several rows of the trees and spaced them close and in zigzag rows across a creek bottom. When I asked why he so planted them he told me that it was to catch the rails and wheat that came down the stream during floods.