Lamb's Tails

Gorgeous little curly and waggly lime-green to yellow lamb's tails standing out in the small window of sunshine this morning.

Striking in the garden at the moment, our dome shaped contorted hazel has thrown out hundreds of catkins almost to defy the weather this month - as it always does. How to cheer up a generally dark day! It makes you smile just to watch them singly and in clumps jiggling in the breeze and you can quite see why they got the name, 'lamb's tails'.

Spurred on by uniqueandlovely's entry I thought I must have a go and I hadn't realised till reading her blip that the red flower is the female which produces the hazelnuts or cobnuts and the male is the catkin. Who needs google when you have clever blippers?!

They do taste like coconut, contain protein and fibre, are rich in vitamin E and calcium also containing BI and B6. Going from green to golden the starch is turned into sugar by the autumn sun when they become sweet and juicy. My entire crop disappeared this autumn and although I would defy you to ever see a squirrel in the garden I do feel that that must be the culprit. Maybe this September I put our stealth cam outside to check my theory to gather evidence!