catkins

Well I was surprised to learn that pussy willows are the male flowers, or catkins as they're called in this case. It's somehow counterintuitive. The female flowers are slinky and long, too weedy in appearance to grace the spring flower arrangements.

These little fellas are considered past their prime now that the silky rabbit's foot has been engulfed in hundreds of yellow anthers, it is really quite a different look. No doubt their masculinity was augmented when we put the cuttings in water.

The other day I saw some cattails in Maine somewhere. This time of year they have an extremely ungroomed motely look, although not quite as unappealing as the grey brown snow piled up along the roadsides now. John Kiernan descrribes the cattail dander seen this time of year clinging to last year's spikes as "ragged cottony remnants." Yes, very much like all the fluff my daughter Nora kept pulling out of our upholstered chair until it was bare bones. When they're cute they get away with murdering upholstery, just like those cats that claw the armchairs.

John Kiernan, Bronx naturalist and author, describes the catbrier lilly as being a blot on the 'scutcheon of the lilly family because it's a pernicious weed. I suppose all our 'scutcheons get blotted eventually.