Catkins

The willows are bee-loud these days, their catkins thrusting out from amongst the new leaves, while honey bees busy.

But hazel catkins have been hanging around since before midwinter.  They featured in my recent snowy header photo, but I also captured them singing to the sun one bright July day.

Alder catkins display a little later than the hazel catkins,

those below, adorning trees planted along a drainage swale in a recent Halswell housing development. 

I'd forgotten to look for the Garrya catkins this year, but Jackie reminded me about them, and deep inside an overgrown scramble, I found these soft grey tassles.

Willow and garrya are both dioecious plants.  That means that they bear male and female flowers on seperate plants.  Hazel and Alder are monoecious; they have male and female parts on the same plant but as seperate flowers. Most of the garden plants that we are familiar with have both male and female parts in the one place - the common idea of a flower.

But what of those feline catkins?  One, a little stray is happy to bask on the bank, but Aelfwise, my curious Manx, is always interested in the water that appears in our ephemeral stream, tapping its leading edge as it fills and glides down the empty bed, or paddling and even sitting in the welling pond...

And when he has had enough, he shakes his paws and bounds up the steps for a nice lie down on my bed!

Alder  Alnus glutinosa

Garrya, silk-tassel bush  Garrya elliptica

Hazel  Corylus avellana

Weeping willow Salix babylonica