Catkins in January
Until today I didn’t know what catkins were because I never looked them up. “A catkin or ament is a slim, cylindrical flower cluster (a spike), with inconspicuous or no petals…” according to Wikipedia. They are out at the moment and I know this is unusual because a few days ago I saw an article about how it was unusual to have pollen warnings at this time of year.
The Swiss weather app shows that there is a lot of pollen. It’s quite funny because if you look at the map of snow and the map of pollen you see that where there is snow there is no pollen, or at least that was the case. With wind movements this situation could have changed. Winter is mild. Pollen is early. Plants are adapting to the changing climate by pollinating out of season.