Heart & Soil by Des Kennedy

Author:Des Kennedy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781550176346
Publisher: Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.
Published: 2014-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

GARDEN PLOTS

Catkin Call

Like a gardening version of the Cinderella story, there comes an intriguing interlude early in the year when certain nondescript bit players suddenly emerge as undisputed stars of the garden. The earliest flowering bulbs, the Chinese witch hazel, winter-flowering jasmine and Viburnum × bodnantense all have their moments of glory in the dull muddle of February slopping into March. But none can quite compare with the sight of pale late-winter sunshine illuminating a mass of golden catkins. It’s a spectacle to damn near break your heart with beauty, a vision of hopefulness and fruitfulness and sassy defiance of the drear days.

At our place, that show’s at its most splendid amid the contorted twigs of the hazel called Harry Lauder’s walking stick, Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’. All along its bronzed and twisted branches, pendant male catkins dangle their rows of tiny flowers made brilliant with yellow pollen. Like the shrub itself, they’re viewed to wonderful effect from underneath, the catkins and serpentine limbs forming a dazzling pattern against the pale-blue late-winter sky. None of this was in our minds years ago when we planted the hazel high up in the hollow centre of an enormous western red cedar stump. But now, oh, how terribly clever! Both stump and tree were things of beauty, and never more so than at catkin time.

Looking down on catkins can be dazzling too, as I discovered one March when flying over Vancouver Island. Ever alert for the latest eco-disaster, I thought at first I was seeing countless dead trees in the forest, as though mountain pine beetles had suddenly descended upon the coast. But as we glided down into the Comox Valley, I realized that the rusty-brown quilt spread across the woods was actually the canopy of red alder trees transformed by a dusting of catkins.

“In the wind of windy March / The catkins drop down / Curly, caterpillar-like, / Curious green and brown.” That’s how poet Christina Rossetti saw them. And, yes, they are curious creations. My Oxford Dictionary defines the catkin as “a unisexual inflorescence, consisting of rows of apetalous flowers ranged in circles along a slender stalk, the whole forming a cylindrical, downy-looking, usually pendant, spike.” It’s also called an ament or amentum.

All manner of trees bear them—including hazel, beech and oak—and they’re a favourite of the fast-growing and short-lived species like poplar, willow, alder and birch. In the hazel family, the catkins have only male flowers. Their companion female flowers are found on a higher branch—tiny but often very colourful. On the other hand, species in the willow family produce catkins that are either male or female; they are set on different plants to prevent inbreeding. Often blooming at a time of year when insects are in short supply, catkins rely upon the wind to carry their abundant pollen to the female flowers. It’s an amazingly effective system, as omnipresent red alders amply testify: they can, and do, seed in at fifty thousand seedlings per hectare.

But it’s their late-winter cheerfulness for which we love catkins best.

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