50 THE RING OF NATURE 



MARCH 



CATKIN TIME 



ALL along the river the alder pyramids have 

 burst in a single night into clouds of 

 powdered primrose. The catkin buds, which 

 were yesterday short and brown, have opened 

 like concertinas and become full-grown ' lambs' 

 tails.' Packed in each of those brown buds 

 were some hundred and fifty fleshy bosses, each 

 holding about twenty male blossoms or pollen 

 masses. The stalks on which the bosses sit had 

 but to lengthen to some three times its length, 

 and the pollen masses are uncovered to the 

 sun and the wind. The sun ripens them, and 

 then the wind bears the dust from the trees in in- 

 calculable multitudes of grains, almost as small 

 as atoms of scent. The air for many square miles 

 is far more full of them than it is of snowflakes 

 in the fiercest storm. At the greatest height at 

 which a balloon travels we should not escape 

 them, and a female catkin twenty miles away 

 would run quite a good chance of getting fertilized. 



