The wind's in the willow and seeds in the air

ANOTHER LIFE:SUCH A FLOWERING! Such white waves of hawthorn breaking over the ditch, such singular billows of burnet rose on the high bank of the boreen.

In the garden, too, a broom bush suddenly twice the size, a golden fountain in our faces. Shrub roses voluptuously perfect, the one from Tibet, Rosa moyesii, waving tall wands of crimson. A long time ago, fogbound in a tent in Greenland, I promised myself a few roses at home as a change from cabbages and turnips: this was much what I dreamed.

In the midst of all the splendour, on the sunniest, calmest days of late May, the big goat willow in the Hollow decided to shed its seeds. By big I mean as big as it gets, 10m high and wide every way, a dozen stems curving out to fill the corner where the stream swings under the hedge.

Their elbows rest on the opposite bank, the better to round out its shape. Nowhere else on the hillside could it possibly exist, so safe from people, their cattle and the worst of storms.

Where its branches swoop up from the Hollow the willow’s canopy becomes an intimate view from the window, cheering us in early spring as bumblebees throng its flowers; thereafter for willow warblers flitting and singing, and tits hanging upside down for aphids under the leaves.

The tree is, however, female, in an unmistakable way. Most catkin-bearing trees have catkins of both sexes growing on the same tree, but in willows only a female tree can bear female flowers, fruits and seeds.

Its catkins become upright, thumb-sized sausages of fluff in which each silky hair connects with infinitesimal seeds. And a tree in full fruiting vigour, such as ours this May, disappears behind a billion-strong surge of progeny clothed in cotton wool. They are pollinated by wind and insects from the bright golden catkins of the numerous male “pussy” willows.

Unlike most other willows, Salix caprea will not grow from a length of branch pushed into moist ground­– it depends on its seeds for reproduction.

Its best weather genetically is thus a good ocean gale to carry its seeds for kilometres, followed by a downpour to embed them in any likely patch of bare soil. They germinate almost immediately, as if to some secret assessment of odds. So our tree was limiting its chances by letting go in such fine, calm weather.

For days on end a slow blizzard of silk drifted across the acre, lodging seeds in cobwebs and crevices, sometimes in my hair and ears. Even in still air a seed can take 10 seconds to fall a metre. (The things they study!) Below the tree itself, whole catkins have fallen, carpeting the grass in giant cotton buds and drifting away in the stream. It has all been memorably profligate, and as the year wears on I shall be pulling up tough-rooted seedlings from flower pots, seed trays, drystone walls, the crack beside the doorstep.

“Goat” came from its use as fodder for the animal, a lowly term lost in posher garden forms of the species, such as the weeping “Kilmarnock” (a male clone and better behaved). To most country people the only distinction between “sallies” is­– or was – between osiers and the rest: the ones from which you could weave a turf creel, lobster pot or potato basket and those you couldn’t. In most townlands of the west and on the islands there’s what’s left of a bed of Salix viminalis or Salix purpurea, small osiers that were coppiced for such ends.

But botanists can sort out about 30 kinds of willow growing in Ireland. The tree that reached here naturally in perhaps six or seven forms has been added to by introductions and hybrids between the species.

Indeed, with such frequent crossings it’s hard to know why the core species have kept so distinct from each other.

In the one little streamside thicket of willows that shelters my potatoes are four quite separate kinds of tree, all different in height and habit, leaf shape and colour.

Perhaps through blessed isolation and prevailing winds, we are spared the plague of fungal rust that overtakes most of the west’s goat willows by late summer, browning and curling the leaves at waysides and ditches far inland.

It’s a miserable sight and looks like drought, but it isn’t. A forester friend once showed me a brassy willow beetle that can do a lot of damage, but that’s not it either.

Blame something called Melampsora, a world-wide family of pathogenic rusts with at least 20 species of its own.

Melampsora is the main disease of willows grown as bioenergy crops and thus newly under the microscope.

Genotypes bred for resistance seem to be the answer commercially, but the wayside, streamside sallies of the west will be left to their own defences. I wonder if, without the rust, they might all be twice the size.

Eye on nature

Recently I found a lime hawkmoth in my garden.

Seamus Aylward, Drumcondra, Dublin

This is a first record for Ireland. They are found in southern Britain.

We are on the flight path of herons to the sea. On a several occasions my attention has been drawn by the loud distress cries of a heron being harried by a small bird that I suspect is a sparrowhawk.

David Lane, Monkstown, Co Dublin

The sparrowhawk must have built its nest on the flight path of the herons and is defending it from disturbance.

On May 19th, at Glendalough, we saw a wryneck. Are they regular visitors?

Bob Lee, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin

The beautiful wryneck is a rare but regular passage vagrant in autumn. In spring they probably come from southern Europe and are found mainly in coastal areas.

A pair of house martins nested in our porch for the past two years. This winter six wrens used it every night. We expected the house martins back this month, but a pair of robins are now in residence. Talk about rent-a-nest!

Patricia O’Malley, Gorey, Co Wexford

Michael Viney welcomes observations at Thallabawn, Carrowniskey PO, Westport,

Co Mayo; viney@anu.ie. Please include a postal address