AiF at Dacha No. 11. From the garden to the table. Cooking desserts with strawberries 06/14/2022
Man has long appreciated the willow. This moisture-loving plant usually settles along the shores of lakes, rivers and streams. Flexible willow twigs are indispensable for weaving baskets; various medicines are prepared from the bark of the trunk.
More than 100 species of willow grow in our country, and the most common among them — willow-beredina, or willow. Its leaves are large, rounded, pubescent from the lower part, and if you remove the bark from the stem of the plant, the wood under it immediately turns red. Willows appear from bloom in early spring, they exude a pleasant honey aroma. Beekeepers try not to miss this time, as the nectar and pollen of willow flowers — excellent food for many insects.
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Widespread in Russia and weeping willow. This plant looks beautiful, bending thin flexible twigs and lightly touching the water with long leaves-fingers. No less attractive is the holly willow (in the people it is called willow), in which, like the beredina, white fluffy, like fur, earrings serve as a spring decoration. Willow gray, or ashen, from "sisters" characterized by wrinkled leaves, with both sides covered with fine fine hairs.
Among the willows they meet like real giants — plants about 40 m high, as well as miniature trees, for example, polar willow. The height of this “baby”, which spreads along the ground, reaches only a few centimeters, and its stem is a little thicker than a match.
It should be noted that in the North and in Siberia, where the summer is short , and the winter is long, the willow saves many animals from starvation. Deer feed on willow leaves, and kidneys — partridges. Don eat willow, elk and hare.
Willow — Plants are hardy and easy to propagate. The wind carries the seeds over long distances, and where they hit the ground, a new plant quickly appears. Young trees may also appear where a broken willow branch has fallen and rooted.
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