Читать книгу The Times A Year in Nature Notes - Derwent May - Страница 62

ON SALLOW BUSHES in damp places, flowers like silvery buttons are coming out along the twigs. These are the male catkins, which will turn from silver to gold, since they will be covered before long with little flecks of bright yellow pollen. The ‘pussy willow’ twigs, as they are often called, are broken off and carried in church processions on Palm Sunday, the last Sunday before Easter. As the catkins are starting to appear so early, it must be hoped that there will still be some left by then. The stringy, green female catkins appear at the same time as the golden pollen, and are fertilised with the help of the wind. Early bees and other insects also come to the sallow catkins.

There are two main kinds of sallow, the common sallow and the great sallow or goat willow. The great sallow is a larger tree with larger, rounder leaves. The common sallow is more of a shrub. Both of them have leaves with downy white undersides, but the narrow leaves of the common sallow usually have some rusty hairs beneath them too. However, the two species grow side by side in hedges, and they have a strong tendency to hybridise.