Black Willow (late June 2023). With the Sycamore gone, there is a better view of these two willows which have grown incredibly quickly.
Black Willow (mid-July 2022)
Leaf details of the Black Willow from mid April 2020.
In the winter of 2017, I took a few cuttings from a nearby wild Black Willow tree. I put one in a pot, stuck one in the ground in the "seedling patch", and put the others in a bucket of water. After a couple of months, all of them had started producing leaves. The Black Willow cutting in the pot filled the pot with roots by the end of April and put out a 2ft long root from the bottom of the pot. Below is a picture of the Black Willow in the seedling patch. I later also transferred the one in the pot to the seedling patch.
Black Willow (early July 2021)
Black Willow (early July 2020)
Black Willow (end of June 2019)
Black Willow (July 2018)
On August 11th one of the Black Willows had a big brown caterpillar sitting on it chewing away on the leaves, looking a bit like a large bird-dropping - I identified it as an Admiral caterpillar, perhaps a Viceroy.
In March 2019, the two Black Willows I planted from cuttings had leafed out again and were smothered in catkins.
These two trees increased in height significantly in 2019. However, in August 2019 I noticed a large beautiful black and white Cottonwood borer beetle at the base of one of the trees. Both trees had been scraped open in two spots at the base of their thin trunks. I presume the beetle deposited eggs under the bark in these spots. I dug around in the holes to try to remove the eggs and treated the trees with systemic insecticide (imidacloprid). If the grubs hatch and thrive they could easily girdle and kill both of these trees. By November 1st 2019, both Black Willows had grown tremendously, threatening to engulf all the other trees in the "seedling-patch"!