With the glowing red ball of sun ready to set, I walked through a savanna in Lake County to discover a multibranched, 6-foot-tall shrub covered with many silvery balls as soft — and about the same size as — the pads on the toes of a cat.
These little puffs of delight are called catkins, and are the emerging flowers of a plant many of us grew up calling pussy willow. We didn’t know they were part of the willow family. We just knew spring was here when we found them, and it was fun to touch what looked like a tiny animal on a branch.
The true native pussy willow, sometimes called glaucous willow, is Salix discolor; there are others that look similar, including the goat willow (Salix caprea), which is native to Eurasia.
“The native pussy willow is occasional in northeastern Illinois and uncommon or absent elsewhere in the state,” writes John Hilty, author of illinioswildfllowers.info. “It’s a primarily boreal species and northern Illinois is the southern limit of its range.”
It grows in openings in flood plain forests, in wet prairies and next to marshes. That’s the kind of habitat I discovered at the savanna, where wetlands were interspersed with oak trees. Hilty writes that the Eurasian “pussy willow” rarely escapes into the wild. So, I’m wondering if the pussy willow seen at the savanna was the native one. A botanist friend of mine said it likely was.
Either way, the brown buds of these small willows opening into soft catkins is one of the earlier signs of spring. The catkins are flowers just before they fully bloom and the soft, kitten hairlike coating serves as insulation to protect the plant from cold temperatures that can linger into spring.
Other willow species have soft, fuzzy catkins, too, and those trees, such as the weeping willow, are also sometimes called pussy willow. I found a YouTube video showing the catkins opening from their soft, white selves to lots of green florets at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9MwR_VO1h4
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The pussy willow I saw at the savanna had mostly closed, soft catkins, but a few of them had some emerging green flowers and I made a note to return in another week to see the plant in full bloom. Perhaps some of you recall placing a cut branch of a pussy willow with all its catkins into a vase of water, and then watching it bloom inside your home.
The willow blooms for a few weeks, and soon thereafter, a female plant will develop seed capsules that open releasing tiny seeds. This all happens before any leaves unfurl on the shrub.
The pussy willow serves many different animals. Small bees, some of the first insects to emerge in spring, feast on the nectar and pollen. Though it’s early for most butterfly species to emerge, the mourning cloak, which overwinters as an adult, lays its eggs on pussy willow leaves. When the eggs hatch, caterpillars emerge to munch on the leaves and become a butterfly or a meal for a songbird.
Another willow native to northeastern Illinois is the black willow, a large tree compared to the smaller shrublike pussy willow. Several grow adjacent to a pond near my home. Every year, throughout summer, I hear a warbling vireo singing near the black willows surrounding the pond. The vireo often places its nest in these willows.
The most common willow folks recognize is the weeping willow, which is native to Asia. It resembles the black willow, although its branches form a graceful arch that touches the ground.
Before North America was settled, Native Americans used the bark of some Salix species to ease pain. In the 1800s, chemists used salicin contained within willow bark to develop aspirin. Willows remind me that within the beauty of the outdoors are species with healing properties, some we surely have not yet discovered.