Wolf Ridge Spring Happenings

With Your Students

You can use willow catkins to help your students observe how male and female flowers develop and change over time. If you have access to an outdoor area, take students outdoors to explore the woods and look for both male and female willow plants. They could also look around their homes and neighborhoods. Any willow species will work if pussy willows are not readily available.

Common characteristics of wiillows are:

many have yellow or orange colored twigs in early spring (pussy willows do not)
buds on the twigs will have only one bud scale
flowering catkins are visible before the leaves emerge
leaves are long and narrow

Once plants are located, bring a sprig of both male and female catkins into the classroom. Place in a vase of water and observe daily.

Observation ideas and questions:

Draw both the male and female flowers. Male flowers have yellow pollen on fine, hair-like filaments. Female flowers have thicker, spiky "carpels", where seed will grow and develop. Use a magnifying glass or jeweler loupe for detail if one is available. Later this spring, you can compare the drawings with those of the dandelion.
Keep class or individual journals of your written observations and drawings.
Which flowers appear first, male or female?
Why might that be?
What might be the advantage of having flowers bloom before the leaves come out?
What do you think the gray "fur" on the male flowers might be for? (Conserving warmth as the flowers develop in early spring when it can get very cold.)
Which do you think will last longer, the male or female flowers (female)? Why (seeds will take several weeks to develop)?


male flower	female flower

Background Information for Teachers

What are Pussy Willows anyways?
When most people talk about pussy willows, they are really talking about the fuzzy gray male flower which blooms early in spring. There is only one true "Pussy Willow" (Salix discolor), famous for it's large flowers, but you might also see other willows with smaller fuzzy flowers.

Pollination
The job of any flower is to help the plant make seeds. Many flowers are brightly colored and showy, designed to attract the insects that will carry pollen from one plant to the next. What many people do not realize is that there are thousands of flowers that are not bright and colorful. These flowers, like those found on grasses and willows, depend on the wind to move pollen from one plant to another.Wind-pollinated plants can't count on a bee bringing precious pollen directly to the right neighboring flower. Instead, they make lots and lots of pollen, and hope that the wind will just happen to blow one or two grains of it to the right plant downwind.

Pussy willows are wind-pollinated. Each male pussy willow catkin is really a collection of hundreds of small flowers, each making copious amounts of pollen to scatter to the wind.

Separate Male and Female Flowers
In addition to being pollinated by the wind, willows have separate male and female plants. This means one whole willow shrub or tree will produce only male catkins ("pussy willows"), while another, perhaps hundredds of yards away, produces only female flowers. Now, depending on wind to pollinate the flowers gets even trickier!

Separate, But Equally Important!

With Your Students

Background Information for Teachers