Amentos

plant focus: catkins Alnus viridis displays its long male catkins and more compact female catkins together as the new spring foliage appears.

HANG OUT PHOTOGRAPHS DIANNA JAZWINSKI | WORDS STEPHEN ANDERTON

MARCH 2014 the english garden 81

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If you thought flowers without petals were unappealing, take some time to gaze up into the trees at their pretty dangling catkins

LEFT Corylus maxima ‘Red Filbert’ (previously C. maxima ‘Red Zellernut’).

BELOW If left unclipped, the common hornbeam, Carpinus betulus, will produce catkins.

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ho would have thought flowers with no petals could be so attractive? Yet that’s what hazel catkins are: strings of tiny male flowers single-mindedly producing pollen; not for attracting insects, but to pump out on the wind in great golden clouds, in the hope that some of it will fall on a female flower. Well, if you don’t use insects as go-betweens, then the wind is your other option, and it’s chancy, so you have to be generous.

Just watch a hazel catkin dancing in the wind in February, and you’ll see there’s no better way of getting that pollen out. It’s like shaking a blanket or a priest swinging his censer. Away it goes.

Hazel catkins are supremely flexible. They bounce and wriggle and hang free of the twigs, although through the winter, the immature catkins are rubbery little stumps. The corkscrew hazel Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’ is generous with its catkins, and they dangle like birds in a cage within its spiralling shoots. If you want variety, purple-leaved Corylus maxima ‘Red Filbert’ has rosy catkins.

DIVERSE & DELIGHTFUL VIBRANT ROSY TASSELS

The evergreen oak Quercus ilex is fringed with yellowygreen catkins, while Quercus robur offers shorter ones. Silver birches cover themselves in stumpy little catkins that loosen up and droop as they open, echoing their weeping twigs, especially in the weeping form Betula pendula ‘Tristis’. The cherry birch Betula lenta, a stiffer American species, has longer, more elegant catkins, and a broken twig smells of oil of wintergreen

Just watch a hazel catkin dancing in the wind in February, and you’ll see there is no better way of getting that pollen out

THE LONG & THE SHORT OF WILLOW 1 Salix purpurea ‘Nancy Saunders’ is from Europe. It grows to 2-3m and is a female form of the shrubby purple osier (Salix viminalis) with thin wispy shoots that wave in the breeze. The slender leaves are bluish green. For maximum foliage effect, cut it hard back every year; but for good catkins, only do it every two to three years. The flowers appear before the leaves and have russet anthers.

2 Salix fargesii comes from China. Grows to 2-3m. A large, stiff-stemmed but truly elegant shrub, whose red-brown shoots shine in the winter sun. Its large leaves come early in spring and can be damaged if you plant it in a frost pocket.

3 Salix udensis from northeast Asia grows to 4m. If you want a rolling cloud of rich glossy green, then this is the willow for you. Give it space and it will make a small tree. The male catkins stand proud among the unfolding leaves.

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the english garden March 2014

plant focus: catkins

ABOVE LEFT Quercus robur.

ABOVE CENTRE Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’ with its male, early spring catkins. RIGHT Betula lenta, also known as the sweet birch.

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- something to make you smile on a cold winter’s day.

Most alder catkins may not be so showy, but as the buds of the common Alnus glutinosa burst on a spring river bank, and the purplish catkins emerge, the moody glow is wonderful. For a drier site, opt for Alnus viridis.

If you grow hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) as a hedge, you may not have seen its splendid catkins, which only really develop on unclipped mature growth.

One of the longest catkins of all comes on a Chinese hornbeam, Carpinus fangiana, which again makes long tassels of fruits, sometimes as much as 30cm and fat as a good cigar. You might be familiar with the long winter tassels of the flowers on Garrya ‘James Roof’? Carpinus fangiana is even more striking. Pencil straight too, unlike the arching catkins of Itea ilicifolia; so scented on an August night.

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plant focus: catkins

The catkins start out grey, and then become a wonderful brick-red before turning yellow TOP The grey catkins of Salix irrorata show their red anthers as they mature; turning from grey, to red, to yellow.

RIGHT Salix caprea, also known as pussy willow, has showy male catkins.

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Most poplars are too tall for you to notice that both their male and female flowers are catkins, but they make their presence felt when the catkins break up into white fluff that floats away like down.

SUPER SALIX And what of willow catkins? They start out rounded, furry and clamped tight to the stem - ‘pussy willow’ as we call them. The classic species is goat willow, Salix caprea. It may look ordinary enough in midsummer, but against a blue sky in spring, silvery at first then golden yellow, there’s nothing to beat it. Goat willow is a rounded small tree, but there are willows that make much faster, straighter growth, and these can be pollarded or coppiced every few years to get the best of the coloured bark and catkins.

All the forms of the white willow, Salix alba, are generous with their catkins, but they show up especially well on Salix daphnoides and the shrubbier Salix irrorata, both of which have purplish bark overlaid in winter with a waxy white bloom. In S. irrorata, the catkins start out grey, and then become a wonderful brick-red before turning yellow.

There’s a grace to catkins even in a simple vase. Try an armful of silvery pussy willow stems shoved in a tall jug, and placed on a black polished Jacobean dresser.

Watch the wood turn magically golden with pollen as the flowers ripen. That’s what catkins are all about. ◆

the english garden March 2014

THE FLORISTS’ FAVOURITE