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.

Goat Willow Catkins on Whidbey Island

Growing up in Southern California, we never saw real pussywillows (except as imported curiosities). They were captive items, like peacock feathers or Mexican jumping beans. They stayed frozen in their soft furry grey velvet form forever.

Maybe that’s why I didn’t recognize them at first in my Seattle neighborhood. I had walked around the same block for years without ever seeing them. Then one March, on a walk with the dog, I noticed something plopping down around me. They were spent pussy willow catkins that had thrown off their pollen and were dropping to in an orgy of dissipation.

From then on, I kept my eye on the bush and came to know all its phases. I love it best when the buds are just showing that flash of milk white, before they open. No, I love it best when the stems are studded with those soft, furry grey velvet puffs, like tiny rabbit feet. I have a vase of them sitting in my window in front of me at my writing retreat. They were blown off this tree in the high wind that came up several nights ago and I found them on the side of the road. They don’t seem to be opening despite the warmth of the cottage, which is just fine.

But I do love the next stage. Here they are on the same tree a few days later, popping out, covered with yellow pollen. I will be eager to get back to Seattle and see how the ones in my neighborhood are progressing.. I think because Seattle is warmer they will already be littering the ground.

I’ve been reading Bill Felker’s list of March Zeitgebers from Poor Will’s Almanac. In Yellow Springs, Ohio, he predicts pussy willow catkins will break in the second week and pollen will appear on the catkins in the fourth week.

Pussy Willows for Easter

I just bought a book of old Easter postcards, and thanks to my new obsession with flowers, I found that I was flipping through the images noticing what flowers were depicted. The stores in my neighborhood are filled with those white lilies which I think of as Easter lilies, but only one of the postcards shows Easter lilies. Two feature tulips, one a hyacinth, one some speedwells (or maybe they’re forget-me-nots) and two display pussy willows.

You can see them most prominently in the one above with the train but I also like the card below with the pussy willows in a basket.

In parts of the world where palms are rare, pussy willows are the branches brought to church on Palm Sunday. And I also just learned about the Polish tradition called Dyngus Day (featured in my calendar http://www.schooloftheseasons.com/april.html): on the Monday after Easter the boys dump water on the girls and whip them with pussy willows. A fertility ritual, especially when one considers how profligate pussy willows are with their pollen. And why.

A few weeks ago on a windy morning, I was walking the dog around the block when a fluffy, yellow-tipped bundle, about the size and shape of a caterpillar, plopped onto the sidewalk at my feet. It made a splat as it sounded. I picked it up and carried it home where it dried into a flattish, cotton ball like lump.

I looked it up in my tree book and realized that these were catkins, that is the male flowers of certain tree families. The yellow color is the pollen which they are trying to spread via the wind. My specimen looked most like the catkins of the goat willow, also known as the pussy willow, so I went back the next morning.

Sure enough, the buds on this particular tree are the soft velvety grey buds I think of as pussy willows. As they develop, they puff up with yellow bristles. These are pollen-covered anthers. I don’t understand the mechanism which makes them drop off the tree (perhaps they want to be blown by the wind into the arms of a female willow). In pussy willows, the sexes are on different trees, so this is a male tree (searching for its mate). Like all wind-pollinated plants (grasses are the same), pussy willows have to produce a lot of pollen to make sure they are spread around enough to find a receptive partner.

Once my specimens had dried, I can still see the little node where the bud once joined the stem. It is fuzzy and fun to pet, and you can see the silky, grey cat-like fur, for which the pussy willow is named, underneath the yellow tips.

The goat willow (salix caprea) is so named because the earliest known engraving of this plant shows a goat eating it. The tree has lots of suckers and the one at the end of the block exemplifies this tendency. It has many sprouts about three to four feet long around its trunk. The bark is a pale grey in color. My tree book says in the open they grow into upright shrubs but on edges they turn into crooked-stemmed trees. Mine is in-between, bigger than a shrub, scrubbier than a tree. The tree book also notes it “springs up rapidly on disturbed soil from seeds blown far with their fluffy coats.” Perhaps the rain in Seattle makes the coats sodden and thus they don’t get quite so far.

Here’s a photograph of the sidewalk in front of the tree, littered with spent catkins. Since I’ve never seen another pussy willow in the neighborhood, I’m not sure the longing of this tree is ever satisfied.