Kentmere on the first day of spring

Male hazel catkins with a deep red female flower

Hazel catkins herald the coming of spring in a drift of gold. The woodland track is fringed with coppiced hazel,  slender shrubs  with catkins that are perhaps the earliest tree-flowers.  Where yellow male catkins are  ready to release pollen we look for  red female flowers,  tiny and fewer.  A glimmering light reveals a hazel growing along a fence-line bordering Kentmere Tarn, a shapely tree unlike the wands of  woodland coppice shrubs.  Its limbs are green with moss, its crown glorious with  golden catkins.  A play of sunlight and mist shows the hazel  deep bronze, then pale gold against the still waters of the tarn.  It's enchanting.

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En route to Kentmere, we see the extent of recent tree- planting in the dale.  And a conservation project to create parkland habitat, where cattle grazing will increase biodiversity.  To confine them, a new fence is being erected upslope of the track through Hall Wood to Kentmere Hall.  The scene is a history of woodland management.  There are ancient boundaries, embankments hedged with trees, and older tracks to link farms across the dale.  The day is still and reflections of deciduous trees show in the waters of Kentmere tarn.  We're fortunate to come upon this lovely hazel with its resplendent catkins showing, sometimes, in good light. The bracken slope above the hazel is now in winter gold so its a scene of changing colours,  and mistiness. 

Just below our track to Hall Wood there's a row of ancient trees marking an old embankment and perhaps a lost way.  They form the semblance of a hedge, a barrier, as if they were once woven together.  A senescent hazel bears a scatter of catkins, clinging on to life. Coppicing  will have prolonged its life and its contorted limbs are moss-green with age.  
Hazel is wind-pollinated and those female flowers  must receive pollen from another hazel not far off.  Today, it's still but when the male catkins are fully open a breeze will create showers of golden pollen.   In late summer I love to find the first new catkins fully formed to overwinter. And now spring and increasing hours of daylight see them burst forth.
This link offers the Woodland Trust's videos on the life of a hazel. It's a reminder to look closely, and to appreciate hazel through the seasons. 

                Woodland Trust
https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk › ... › a-…