Inflorescences in the form of earrings are usually found on trees growing in countries with a temperate or cold climate. Mostly such trees are deciduous. But, on the other hand, not all of them are related and even belong to different orders.
Earring is a type of inflorescence. In it, small flowers are attached to the main axis (branch). These are simple inflorescences. And they fall down, unlike ears of corn. In nature, complex and simple inflorescences are distinguished. In the latter, simple earrings are fixed on the axis of the inflorescence. Thus, the earring is double.
About what happens to a tree with catkins, about plant species, about the features of their growth will be briefly described in this article.
Wind-pollinated (anemorphic) plants
The main difference between a variety of shrubs and trees that have the type of inflorescence of an earring is the nature of their pollination. In nature in the plant world, the following factors can contribute to this process: birds, insects, and mammals. And there is also the wind.
Pollenized by the wind, catkins on trees in spring appear with the first rays of the warm sun. This is due to the absence of leaves on the trees, since pollen freely moves on them, reaching the goal.
But wind-pollinated plants are different, with different evolutionary devices and principles.
Representatives of such plants are trees from the Birch family.
Earring Trees: Names
Warty birch is the most common in Eurasia. Inherent to her early spring flowering. Earrings are complex inflorescences widely used in medicine.
The Nuts family, pollinated by the wind, are also representatives with earring inflorescences: black walnut, walnut, gray walnut, hazel.
Hazel, or hazel, is a small tree with catkins or shrubs. Plant with unisexual flowers, monoecious. The opening of the earrings also occurs before the leaves appear.
Alder also blooms before the leaves bloom. The peculiarity is that there are species of this plant blooming in autumn, after the leaves fall. Earrings same-sex.
Hornbeam is a same-sex plant. His earrings open at the same time as the leaves.
Aspen - another tree with earrings. The plant is dioecious and has small, inconspicuous flowers, collected in hanging earrings. Male inflorescences have a reddish tint, up to 15 centimeters long, and female inflorescences are thin greenish. Aspen blooms before the leaves bloom.
Poplar also blooms before the leaves bloom. It is curious that aspen and poplar belong to the Willow family, in which its other representatives are pollinated by insects.
Separately about alder
This tree, blooming with catkins, blooms as soon as the snow melts and the spring sun warms the earth a little. It transforms, becoming reddish-golden. Its inflorescences look like surprisingly beautiful female earrings, although these are male flowers (dioecious tree). In such a single earring, whose length is about 7 cm, a total of about 300 flowers!
The peculiarity of this plant is that the future earrings on the alder are laid at the very height of summer, they grow slowly and only in the fall they acquire their “planned” sizes. After wintering on bare branches, in spring, with the first rays of the sun, the inflorescences grow, grow fat, and then open their anthers.
Swaying from a slight blow of the wind, the inflorescences drop yellow pollen, covering the branches of a tree with a light cloud. The alder hurries to bloom before its leaves bloom, as the latter interfere with the transfer of pollen from the male earring to the female spikelet.
Birch Earrings
Birch (a tree with earrings) is not only the most common and famous plant of the Russian territories, but also the most harmonious, beautiful and delicate. And an important role in this is played by the most amazing earrings.
They are female and male at the birch. The first are single and more subtle.
Quite widespread use of birch earrings in folk medicine. And usually use male (staminate), hanging and located next to several pieces. Infused birch catkins treat heart disease, gastritis and gastric ulcer, tuberculosis and anemia.
We can talk quite a lot about earrings growing on trees, since there are many similar plants in nature.