FLOWER POWER

Spring flowers are in their glory now but one of the most beautiful and definitely most underrated and unnoticed flowers has to be the tiny little red, fluffy hazel (Corylus) flower. Look hard on the naked hazel branches now and you will find it. It is so worth the effort and one of my absolute favourite things in nature.

The hazel has both male and female flowers on each shrub, but the two flowers are quite different. The male flowers are gathered within the long, breeze-blown catkins and these are by far the most prominent. We all know and love the lambstail-like catkins as an indicator that spring will soon be pulling into the station.

Each catkin is made up of many individual flowers – these are the small green/yellow male flowers, which produce the pollen. There are around an amazing 240 male flowers in each catkin and they form during the previous summer so that they are ready to open in the dead of winter and flower through the spring. How’s that for planning ahead?

The female flowers are tiny individual flowers, visible only as red styles protruding from a green bud-like structure on the same branches as the male flowers. They are also an important source of pollen for bees.

I can never resist pointing out that the show-offy, male catkins get all the attention whilst the beautiful and hardworking little female flower just gets overlooked.

They are definitely worth taking the time and trouble to look for – and watch someone’s face light up the moment they spot one for the first time.

Hazels typically begin flowering in late January and can go on into April but they are relatively prolific at the moment. Once pollinated in the springtime, the female flowers set to work producing the hazelnuts, which ripen in the autumn.

It never ceases to impress me.