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The heterosexual willow, whose Latin name is dioecious, the two flowers are different in color, the male flower is fluffy, yellow to off-white, and the female flower is green (I haven’t seen it before!). But because Latin is discolor, it was confused with English discolored, and it became pussy willow. Alas!

The common name in English is pussy willow. It is said that in winter the male tree will have beautiful inflorescences (Catkin), like cat’s paw. I haven’t seen it.

But I see a lot of male flowers, because there are many bees (you can hear the buzz far away)! This pollen and honey are a lot. This flower is an American native plant. Unfortunately China does not. It is usually a bush, but it can grow to 3-4 people tall, but the branches are still very thin.

1. The first batch of photos were taken on April 31, 2006, D70 (6 megapixels).

2. These all use flash to darken the background.

3. The bees are clearly collecting honey

4. Young flowers are yellowish red.

5. The second batch of photos were taken on 2014.4.26.

6. The flower then turns yellow, and finally turns white (seems also called pussy willow, unfortunately not the original Latin meaning!). This is not a bee, but a solitary bee.

7. This is more white.

8. This year, it opened on April 21, 2019. I took a visit to study the flowers (forgot to take pictures of them). The black spots on the blue sky background are all bees, most of them are solitary bees. There are also many bees.