32 LITTLE WANDERERS. 
The pollen in the staminate flowers is very abundant 
and is carried by the wind or by insects to the pistillate 
flowers. If you shake a twig of ripe 
staminate catkins, your hands and 
clothes will be covered with pollen 
Pistillate dust. 
catkin. 
Bees are fond of willow pollen and 
eagerly gather it in the early spring. The willow 
catkin has a tiny drop of nectar at the base of each 
little flower, and bees and flies are fond of this and 
visit the willows to get it. Of course, as the insects 
fly from one catkin to another, they carry pollen from 
one to another. 
After a time the staminate flowers wither and fall, 
but the pistillate ones are followed by seed pods, and 
the stem that bears them lengthens to make room for the 
growing pods, and at last when the seeds are ripe the 
pods split open and out come the tiniest of little seeds, 
each with a tiny plume of down, and away they fly. 
There are a great many species of willow, and not all 
of them are as pretty as the pussy willow. One reason 
why the pussy willow is so pretty is that the catkins 
appear before the leaves. In some willows the catkins 
come with the leaves, and in some they come after the 
leaves are fully grown. Many willows have bright red 
or yellow or green stems that give color to the land- 
scape even in midwinter. 
