It was early Spring and Cottontail Rabbit was rejoicing. The winter buds of the trees and bushes would soon be opening into the new green leaves which Cottontail so loved to nibble. There was still a deep blanket of snow but he knew that it would soon be melting away.
He decided to take a nap to make the time pass more quickly. He spied a hollow in the trunk of a willow and hopped up into it. With his soft fur fluffed up for warmth, he snuggled down and was soon asleep.
When Cottontail awoke he was immediately aware that the air was much warmer. He sat up and looked around. To his surprise, the snow was mostly gone. He had slept for so long that spring had already arrived! In great excitement he went to jump down from his hollow in the tree so he could start feasting upon the new spring greens. But then he stopped; to his dismay, the ground was now a long way off! When he hopped into the tree the snow had been so deep that it was only a very short hop. Now the snow was gone and Cottontail hung back in fear. He couldn't jump all that way to the ground!
He sat in the tree for some little time, and the longer he sat, the more anxious he became. He had slept for so long that he was very hungry and his stomach was growling. He felt positively faint with hunger but he could just not bring himself to jump. But the warm spring breeze was tickling his little pink nose with the enticing scent of green grass and leaves, and at last it was more than he could bear. He shut his eyes and jumped.
Unfortunately, he didn't jump out quite far enough from the tree and his white fluffy tail caught in some branches and tore right off. There it hung in the willow tree as Cottontail scurried away, with a rather sore bottom, to find some grass and leaves to eat. And ever since, Cottontail has had just a white tuft for a tail; and every spring, little fluffy tails appear on the willow, in memory of the time Cottontail overslept and got stuck in the tree.
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This story is adapted from the Seneca Indian legend of the pussywillow. These soft fluffy harbingers of spring have long captured the imaginations and the hearts of young and old. There are over 50 species of willow in the eastern half of North America alone, and identifying one from another can be enough to test the skills of the most accomplished botanist. But the pussywillow remains perhaps the best known and certainly the best loved.
Willows are in the family Salicaceae, which includes both poplars and willows, and in the genus Salix. They can be either shrubs or trees, and generally prefer wet soil. The leaves are usually long, narrow and finely toothed, and emit a distinctive odor when crushed (try sniffing the cut ends when you gather your pussywillows this spring). The fuzzy catkins are actually the flowers and appear before the leaves. Male and female flowers are produced on separate plants.
Willows don't really produce pinecones; those silver cone-like entities which appear on the ends of twigs are actually a type of insect gall. They are caused by a midge which lays eggs on willows. The larvae stimulate the plant to produce the gall which serves as a protective living space. The galls also make very nice additions to dried bouquets.
Willows have very dense, strong roots and are therefore useful for controlling erosion along streams. They are also an important food source for many types of wildlife, including grouse, ptarmigan, deer, moose, beaver, muskrats, porcupines, snowshoe hares, and, of course, our friend Cottontail.
Some types of willow are used in basket making. And one type, the white willow which is a European import, has the distinction of being the world's first aspirin. Early civilizations were well aware of the use of willowbark tea for fever and pain. The active substance, salicin, is the substance from which salicylic acid was first derived, though it was actually first isolated from Spirea (Meadowsweet), not from willow. In fact, the name "aspirin" came from rearranging the letters in "Spirea". Nowadays, the drug in aspirin Is generally acetylsalicylic acid, which is semi-synthetic. But it all started with willowbark tea prepared over the cave campfire.
Pussywillows have always had many special meanings for me but perhaps the strongest is: Welcome Spring!
Charmaine Kinton writes from the Vermont Institute of Natural Science in Woodstock, Vt.
Pussywillows