The arctic willow is a food source for several arctic animals.

It comes to life for just a few short weeks, feasting on the brief new growth of Arctic willow before returning to its hibernation chamber.

The Arctic willow is the only woody species to grow on Ellesmere Island.

Like the rest of the willows, arctic willow is dioecious, with male and female catkins on separate plants.

The island has no trees, and the only woody plants are Arctic Willow, standing no more than a foot (30 cm) high.

Plant life in the Arctic includes grasses, mosses, and Arctic willows.

Muskoxen will eat grasses, arctic willows, woody plants, lichens, and mosses.

These include the Arctic Willow (Salix arctica) which is hard to recognize as a tree because of its low height.

Salix arctica (arctic willow) is a tiny creeping willow (family Salicaceae).

These include Arctic Willow, Crowberry, sedges, mosses and lichens.

Some plants they pollinate include arctic poppies, Arctic roses, and Arctic willows.

In the late 1980s, several sites of fossilized tree stumps and branches were found on its northern shore, an area now characterized by Arctic willow shrubs.

A thin soil layer supports Arctic Willow, Crowberry, sedge, lichen and moss.

Tree species are limited to dwarf species like Arctic willow, Alaska willow and dwarf birch.

Dwarf scrub heath, dwarf birch, arctic willow, well-drained lichens, and herb vegetation dominate the flora.

Nunavut's vegetation is partially composed of rare berries, lichens, Arctic Willows, moss, tough grass, and small willow shrubs.

The matlike jungles of arctic willow hedged the stream in places, and streaks of snow and ice lay along cracks where the sun could not reach.

The island does not have any trees, with the tallest plant, the arctic willow, sometimes growing to about the height of a person's knee but usually standing no taller than 10 cm.

Both the Gwich'in and Inuit in the Bathurst Inlet area were known to eat parts of the arctic willow, which is high in vitamin C and tastes sweet.

Since at least the late 19th century, the river has been known by its English name "Leaf River", which was probably derived from the arctic willow and birch trees that grow sparsely along its banks.

The plant cover is sparse in the drier areas while the wetter areas have a fair cover of mosses, sedges, shrubs such as purple saxifrage, arctic willow, and arctic poppy and rushes.

The arctic willow grows in tundra and rocky moorland, and is the northernmost woody plant in the world, occurring far above the tree line to the northern limit of land on the north coast of Greenland.

Little vegetation can be found in Auyuittuq Park, although the plants found there range from flowers such as Mountain Avens, Campion, Papaver, and Saxifrage to shrubs like Dwarf Birch, Arctic Willow, and heather.

Some of the plant species found are arctic black spruce, arctic willow, cottongrass, crustose lichens, kobresia, moss species, wood rush, wire rush, purple saxifrage, Dryas species, sedges, Diapensia, arctic poppy, mountain avens, mountain sorrel, river beauty, moss campion, bilberry, and arctic white heather.

Here we discovered some of the 164 plants that grow in the permafrost: the purple saxifrage, which, according to our experts, is the most northern growing flower in the world, and the Arctic willow tree, which, like many of the plants in this area, has a two-month growing season and reaches a height of only two-and-a-half inches.

They are also known to feed on Salix arctica where Astragalus are absent.

These include the Arctic Willow (Salix arctica) which is hard to recognize as a tree because of its low height.