Pussy Willows for Spring

It was a goat willow tree that launched My Year in Flower project back in 2008 when it dropped a spent blossom on my head as I walked past with the dog. At first I thought it was a caterpillar and recoiled in disgust. The sidewalk at my feet was littered with hundreds of little squishy yellow items. And when I looked up, I discovered they came from a spindly tree with bare branches growing close to the sidewalk. And on the lower branches of the tree, I recognized the white fuzzy buds of pussy willows.

Pussy willows had always seemed mythical to me. They didn’t grow wild in Southern California. We only saw them when we went to the Farmers Market in downtown Los Angeles which we only did when relatives came to visit. The pussy willow branches came wrapped in plastic. When brought home and put in vases, they remained frozen in their fuzzy bud stage.

But on this tree, I saw all the stages in their development. First, tender milk-white buds. Bristling green catkins came next, which were gradually frosted with yellow pollen before dropping from the tree to litter the sidewalk in soggy clumps like so many used condoms. And, as I thought about it, I realized this tree was in a constant wave of orgasm as each little flower puffed out its pollen and then collapsed, spent.

It amazed me that I had walked past this tree for years (I’ve lived in my neighborhood for 14 years) and never noticed this miraculous transformation. (To give me credit, this whole cycle is over in one month; for the rest of the year, the tree is rather boring:either bare branches or green leaves.)

The goat willow tree surprised me again this year when I realized there is another stage in its development. Before the milky white buds appear, the ones we think of as pussy willows, they have to push through the brown caps that have protected them through the winter. Right now the sidewalk is covered with those light brown husks, like so many tiny insect shells.

It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance.... To perceive freshly, with fresh senses is to be inspired. Thoreau.

This entry was also cross-posted at my other blog at Living in Season.