Birches and their Neighbors - Day 17

Sunny Birches with Catkins

Catkins  

- silhouetted against birches in the sun  

Catkins are a birch's way of making another birch.
In summer, the fertilized female flower ripens and develops a stack of tiny tri-lobed nutlets, the tree's seeds. Over the fall and winter, these miniature gliders gradually separate from the core of the catkin and drift to the ground. There, the nutlets provide food for birds, mulch for other plants, and where conditions are right, some of the seeds sprout and grow into baby birches.  

Birches and their Neighbors - Day 14

Golden Birch Catkins

The Colors of Birch Catkins

- winter decorations for the garden 

Every few years, birch trees will produce a bumper crop of seed-bearing catkins. This year the birches are filled with dense clusters of these ochre-colored pendants.
The catkins create vertical patterns that look like golden chandeliers in the tree branches, moving gently in the wind.