88 Catkins 



female flowers grow on separate trees) : sallow, alder, 

 poplar, bog myrtle, walnut, beech, oak, Spanish chestnut. 

 (The last three will not be in flower as early as the 

 others, but may be used for revision in a few weeks' 

 time.) 



In the early spring, before the leaves are out, some 

 of the trees are already breaking into flower. If you 

 look in the hedges at about this time of year you will 

 find that the bees are clustering on those silver and 

 golden tree flowers that country children call " palms," 

 and the bare twigs of the hazel bushes where you 

 gathered nuts in the autumn are showing dangling 

 catkins, as these long hanging bunches of flowers are 

 called (Fig. 44). We will look at some of these bunches 

 more closely and try to find out what a catkin really is. 



You will see that the hazel catkin is made up of a 

 number of tiny flowers growing round one long stem. 

 Each flower is too small for you to be able to see it 

 distinctly with your eyes, unhelped by any glass, but you 

 can take a few of them carefully off with the point of a 

 long pin and look at them through a pocket lens. Each 

 of them is made up of a greenish scale and of a bunch 

 of stamens covered with a golden powder called pollen 

 that shakes off when the catkin swings in the wind 

 (Fig. 44 a). Now look carefully at the rest of the twig. 

 Do you see anything on it besides the long stamen- 

 bearing catkins ? Here and there is what looks like a 

 green bud with a few crimson hairs sticking out at the 

 top. This is a bunch of very simple flowers of another 

 kind. Break off one of these buds and take it very 

 carefully to pieces. The scales of which it is made up 

 come apart and some of the inner ones are found to 



