Leafless trees are thickening and blurring, their twigs swelling. Wooded hill-lines that a month ago showed sharp outlines against the sky have become smudged with a smoke of developing buds.
This is the first, early stage of awakening, a slow, subtle infill that comes with the return of birdsong and the gradual lightening of days. Dormant buds formed at the end of last summer are responding to an alchemy of hormones, stored sugars and the beginning of the Earth’s tilt twards the south.
Like birdsong, perception of these changes comes and goes according to the weather and time of day. Growth is still encased in protective scales and it will be another four weeks or so before leaves start to burst through.
Under the shadow of hail clouds, oak and ash look dull and cold, untouched by any spark of spring. Then the sky changes and it takes only the faintest wash of sunlight for their colours to leap out, like wetted pebbles licked by the tide. Branches that were black-bare turn maroon-purple. Birch is showing especially strongly now, glowing auburn against cracked white bark. Beech and rowan are still tight asleep, but sycamore is fattening a burgundy halo.
Down by the river, goat willow is beginning to split its silky buds to reveal cotton-bud tufts. These are the male flowers, which will fluff out into the familiar pussy-willow cat’s paws. As they ripen, they turn lemon with pollen, providing one of the earliest food sources for bees. Hazel dingle‑dangles yellow catkins and its youngest stems gleam in the rain like lengths of copper piping. Alder is beginning to uncrinkle crimson cones.
All these effects are muted when compared with the bright orange flare of a tall willow near the River Char. Highlighted in a patch of sunshine against grey skies, it’s a bonfire of lit twigs. This tree is a self-seeded garden variety of white willow (Salix alba) cultivated for those golden-red shoots. In a few months’ time, its colours will have changed again and its fire damped. When the wind catches its boughs in June, it will shiver olive-silver, as the long leaves flip to show whitened undersides.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
