The Century Willow of Dow's Lake

The weeping willow is not from Babylon. The species that carries the name, Salix babylonica, came from China. This tree is a hybrid of it with the European white willow, and the hybrid is the only reason a weeping willow can stand an Ottawa winter at all. The National Capital Commission's register calls this one huge and says it goes back to the earliest days of the Ottawa Improvement Commission, which planted it in the early twentieth century. That is as precise as the source gets, so around a century old is as precise as this page gets. The driveway it stands on was built between 1900 and 1905 and was lined with trees and gardens from the start, which is documented independently, though no source outside the register singles out this willow. Golden weeping willow earns the first half of its name in late winter, when the leaves are gone and the hanging twigs turn a clear yellow that carries right across the water of Dow's Lake. It earns the second half from April on, when the crown comes down in curtains to the grass. Nobody has measured the trunk. A willow this size is one of the few trees on the canal you can walk into rather than merely up to, which is worth doing once, preferably when nobody is watching.