Early flower power of the hazel catkin

Now spring flowers are beginning to line up to open. It is a demure procession in February that turns quickly into a rowdy March. The first few are worth savouring and Hazel, Corylus avellana, is one of the best.

Hazel is the botanical man’s best friend. It produces food in the autumn. Its strong, straight branches have been cut down by people for building homes and fencing for centuries. The coppiced trees shelter dormice.

You might think you know hazel flowers already. They’re those pale yellow catkins which look like cats’ tails hanging from the twigs (catkin comes from katteken which means kitten in Dutch). You might not know, though, that each catkin is not one flower but a collection of around 240 individual ones heavy with pollen. Or that catkins aren’t the only flower on a hazel. The good thing about early spring flowers is there are so few of them that you have no excuse not to spend more time looking at them in detail. Hazels are monoecious: they have female and male flowers on the same plant. The catkins are male and easy to find. The female flowers are there too, opening just a few days after the male. But you have to work to find them. They are little stars sprouting from swollen buds on the twigs around the catkins. Just a few millimetres across, these flowers aren’t the soft baby colours of spring flowers: they’re an intense, MAC-lipstick-style pink.

Hazel is wind-pollinated and need to find others nearby to join in the fun. So the pollen from the male catkins travels through parks, woodlands and gardens on the sharp breeze, and enough of it lands on those pink sea anemone female flowers for them to fertilise and grow into cobnuts later in the year. By that time, there’s so much about that you might overlook a hazel altogether. But do remember how generous this tree is at a time of year when bright pink flowers and soft kitten tails are still the most exciting thing you’ll see as you trudge out on yet another walk in the chilly city.

Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator and author of The Natural Health Service