Salix

Willow features and flowering

Depending on the subspecies, this tree flowers March and May. Willows are deciduous trees and have tall and narrow leaves with a beautiful sawn shape. The buttons forming the branches have a bud scale and eventually sprout in the form of catkins. Willow catkins grow upright and, due to their structure, have a certain amount of fluffiness. The catkins appear before the leaves in fall and attract a lot of bumblebees and wasps, so the tree is not only popular with humans. The seeds are not only dispersed by the work of insects, the wind also helps to spread these fluffy seeds.

Moist in their care and soil

The willow is a popular tree species because of its decorative appearance and is a true eye-catcher on every piece of land. Not only is the willow a beautiful tree to look at, it also puts little demands on care or soil type, as long as the soil is moist enough. It is no surprise that, in the Netherlands and Belgium, these trees are often planted in the vicinity of rivers and ponds; they grow fast in moist soil.

Willows belong to the pioneer species and therefore do very well in the sun or partial shade. The more sunlight the leaves get, the more colorful they become. 

Depending on the type of willow, they are best be pruned after the flowering of the catkins. Some types of willows are big growers and need proper pruning to reach an acceptable height. The tallest branches that reach the ground can be pruned first, after which the shorter branches must be cut to half the trunk height.

Particularities

Willows have been around for as long as humans can remember and there are many stories about this tree species. For example, the willow is a fertility symbol whereas a related species, the weeping willow, is a symbol for broken love and death. Because this association with death was first made in the middle ages, it was believed that witches also slept in willow treetops.

In reality, however, we see that not witches hide in treetops, but birds, bats, martens and insects, who find acceptable hiding places here. The willow is a true enrichment for the fauna and should for this reason only be pruned in winter, to prevent nuisance.