Exploring the arrival and departure of March through its foliage

ONE special day in March is the true herald of spring, but the exact day is as unpredictable as winds from the west which blow away the last cobwebs of winter. According to the Gregorian calendar, 1 March is the official first day of spring, although 21 March as vernal (spring) equinox is a more seasonally accepted start.

However, the start of spring is not set in stone but governed by what went before and what is occurring in real time in relation to the climate and weather. For most people the start of spring is visual, but for me it’s all about scents, smells and earthly aromas.

On one sunny day in March there is a different smell in the air. The sensation is an age-old observation rooted in tradition and connected to the popular phrase ‘spring is in the air’. However, it is also built on a solid science base, because the soil is warming up with sufficient speed and stability to release plumes of volatile, aromatic chemicals into the air as the first scents of spring.

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March is the biological beginning of a new year and time to toss the old one away. The ‘Ides of March’ (15 March in the Roman calendar) is locked into Ancient religious festivals and seasonal celebrations. More specifically, it is the day on which debts have to be settled, which is what Brutus did with aplomb to Julius Caesar.

March is the month when pink-flowered cherry plum trees are in full bloom. This specimen tree is as old as the suburban street which was built in the 1930s.

According to folklore, March comes in like a lion on strong south-westerly winds to liberate pollen from the common hazel (Corylus avellana). The male catkin, which started life as stubby green structure way back in August, is now longer and looser, ready to throw its pollen grains to the wind. Each male catkin (inflorescence) comprises a phenomenal 250 individual flowers that combine to release clouds of pale yellow pollen into the mad-March winds.

Affectionately called lambs’ tails by countless generations of children, they fly like flags in the early March winds as an iconic marker for the month. The word catkin is apparently derived from the Dutch word katteken, which means kitten, because the catkins resemble the fluffy tails of kittens. However, the English interpretation as lambs’ tails is perhaps more appropriate since March is height of the lambing season.

Close-up on the flowers of a pink-flowered cherry plum tree.

Hazel is not the only British native tree species to fly flags in March. Male catkins on the closely related common alder (Alnus glutinosa), which is also of the birch family (Betulaceae), also maturing in March, are longer, plumper and more colourful with a distinct reddish tint within the basal pale yellow.

Why hazel catkins rather than alder catkins became a harbinger of spring is a bit of a mystery, but the reason is almost certainly rooted deep in history and folklore. Probably it is because hazel was always a joyful and benign spirit tree of the hedgerow and woodland, whereas alder was typically a tree of the malevolent marshland.

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As children we knew exactly where to look for hazel catkins, in the hedgerow at the back of the wood where the winter hedge-cutters always failed to reach. At the same time, we looked for perennial clumps of white-flowering sweet violets down the lane and under the same stretch of old hawthorn hedge, there without fail every year; and the deep purple variety on the eastern edge of the wood, where sweet violet plants were warmed by the morning sun.

In early March lambs’ tails (male catkins) on the hazel shrub are longer, looser and ready to throw pollen grains to the wind.

They are the scented flowers of the not-so-common Viola odorata, flowering a few weeks earlier than the obscenely common, scentless and paler-purple dog violet (Viola riviniana). Having an animal dimension to the common name – dog violet, horse chestnut, sheep’s sorrel or pignut – infers inferiority, certainly the case for the pale, scentless and ubiquitous Viola riviniana.

Away from the woodland and into the wayside, the suburban landscape has its own markers and harbingers of spring, including, for me, two trees, neither of which is native.

Male catkins are more abundant and plumper on common alder than those borne by closely related hazel. They also display a distinct red hue as the pollen matures.

The wild, white-flowered cherry plum in the hedgerow will have been in flower for several weeks, but now is the turn of the custom-bred, pink-flowered varieties such as Prunus cerasifera ‘Pissardi’ and Prunus cerasifera ‘Nigra’ widely planted as street trees during the interwar years. The suburban streets of London and its environs are now home to grand old trees planted during the 1930s housebuilding boom, which transformed the county of Middlesex from a rural landscape into an urban jungle in less than 20 years.

Cherry plum is back in fashion as a street tree and, if your local authority is as slack as mine, you might see white and pink flowers on the same tree. These pink-flowering varieties are invariably grafted onto the more vigorous wild, white-flowering rootstock which tends to sucker profusely. Unless the suckers are removed on a regular basis, the more vigorous rootstock overwhelms the grafted tree.

The other exotic tree which stirs in March is the white-flowering horse chestnut, a native of warmer climes but one of the first on the block to sprout new leaves. I recall sitting by the pond in the local park on a still, late March day and hearing what sounded like the patter of tiny feet. It was sticky bud scales from a veteran horse chestnut tree floating down and striking the surface of the pond with a faint but discernible sound.

March is a good month for gorse as it picks up speed for peak flowering in April and May.

The inherently large, sticky buds start to swell in early March until the bud scales are forced off to reveal the leaves and inflorescence, which arch out like some ugly fledgling bird before developing into the hands of leaflets and candelabra-like blossoms in April.

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I can no longer repeat the experience, because the veteran horse chestnut tree succumbed to bacterial bleeding canker disease 10 years ago. However, I can enjoy another spectacle at the water’s edge, happening annually in the second half of March – the flip-flopping and soft-splashing of mating common frogs. However, the show doesn’t last long. The amorous amphibians come and go, leaving large lumps of tapioca-like spawn in the shallows among the brilliant yellow marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris – plant family Ranunculaceae) just coming into flower.

We knew exactly where to look for the dark purple sweet violets – on the east side of the wood where they caught the morning sun.

The exact timing of all of this may well depend on where you are in the British Isles and in this I defer to Philip Edward Thomas (3 March, 1878 – 9 April, 1917) the Anglo-Welsh poet, essayist and novelist. Realising that spring progressed from the southwest, Thomas set out by bicycle from London to the Quantock Hills in Somerset to meet spring. It was March 1913, almost a year and a half before the start of World War I. Thomas, as a serving soldier, was tragically killed at Arras in France in April 2017.

He wrote a book called In Pursuit of Spring, which documented his journey. He illustrated the text with photographs taken along the way. Observers of the time say the journey was his way of reconnecting with the countryside following a period of living in London. Describing the view from Leatherhead bridge in Surrey, he wrote:

“It is no new thing to stop on the bridge and look up the river to the railway bridge, and down over the divided water to the level grass, the tossing willows, the tall poplars scattered upon it, the dark elms beside, and Leatherhead rising up from it to the flint tower of St Mary and St Nicholas, and its umbrageous churchyard and turf as of grass-green silk.”

April will arrive in a few days’ time, but don’t be lulled into a springtime stupor because there’s still sufficient time for a blackthorn winter. The very last throw of March is when the diminutive white flowers of the native blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) break out along the black, bare twigs. Beware, because winter may have a final fling with flurries of snow that settle along the branches to resemble the blackthorn bush in flower. This is what country folk mean when they talk about the ‘blackthorn winter’.

Despite such setbacks, March is good for a native evergreen shrub with bright yellow flowers, able to withstand whatever early spring weather has to offer. This is common gorse (Ulex) on a flowering sprint through March to its peak blossoming period in April and May. Few native plants can match the sunshine yellow of its pea-like flowers. Other names for this attractive and highly useful shrub, despite its sharp, spiny needle-like leaves, are furze or whin. Gorse was widely fed to livestock and the twigs made ideal fuel for the baker’s oven. Branches were cut and bound to make brushes for sweeping floors and chimneys, and the dense green pigment sourced from the leaves was used to colour Easter eggs.

March roars in like a lion and, if all goes to plan, March will leave us like a lamb.

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