A willow or not?

This prompted by BH commenting on what she took to be a weeping willow, just along the street. My response, thinking of the appearance of weeping willows much earlier in the year, at, for example, reference 5, was: 'not at all, entirely wrong leaf formation'. I thought I had better try to check whether I was right or just being contrary. Given that I have nothing more than the snap above to go on, with not altogether satisfactory results.

It was not possible, for example, to take advantage of the following paragraph from reference 7:

'... Most members have serrate or dentate leaf margins, and many of those that have such toothed margins exhibit salicoid teeth, a salicoid tooth being one in which a vein enters the tooth, expands, and terminates at or near the apex, near which are spherical and glandular protuberances called setae...'.

Illustrations provided. With the adjective 'salicoid' being derived from 'salix', suggesting that the feature is a good identifier for a member of the family.

On a snap taken from the image above, Google Images (GI) seems to have no doubt that it is indeed a weeping willow. GI was not logged in, which might have made a difference.

The small tree is clearly of weeping format. At the top of the snap, the alternate arrangement of the leaves along the stems is clearly visible. GI says spiral too, although I am not so sure about that.

He suggests looking for stipules at the base of the leaves and looking at the colour of the undersides of the leaves, but these are not options.

He goes on to get quite excited on the subject of the wisdom of planting such a tree next to house on the edge of a chalk down. He seems to know a lot about the subject, so perhaps he gets asked a lot about that.

Some talk, I think in Wikipedia, about the many species of willow easily hybridising, with the weeping willow being a hybrid of Salix alba and Salix babylonica - but I think most people settle for the latter. But it may be that there are plenty of varieties and cultivars under the 'weeping willow' umbrella.

Doubts apart, BH probably right. Must make a point of tracking the weeping willow near the top of Longmead Road next spring. The detail images provided at reference 3 will then be helpful.

PS 1: along the way, I have been reminded of another willow flavoured confusion noticed at references 4 and 6.

PS 2: for the opening snap, I used a zoom of 4 as I could not get close. Don't know whether this gives you more pixels to the second of arc or whether it simply adjusts the visible image.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salix_babylonica. The species.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow. The genus.

Reference 3: https://ask.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/ST576/pdf. A fact sheet for the weeping willow.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/07/ryde.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/03/butterbur.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/10/long-grove.html.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salicaceae. The family.