First flowers, then leaves, then fruits
The order of what the aspen brings out over the course of the year is the same as that of its congeners. Like all Populus species, the flowers appear first on the stage. In subtropical latitudes they can appear as early as February, in our case they appear from March or April. They then have the tree to themselves for the entire flowering period.
also read
- The trembling poplar: the tree with the trembling leaves
- The fruit of the winter linden tree is a nut
- The fruit of the elm
Because the leaves only wake up after the kittens have bloomed. It can unfold undisturbed for a while and stretch out its fresh green, before the fruits appear from the end of May.
The flowering, foliage and fruiting times at a glance:
- In this country flowers from March / April
- Leaves unfold in April
- Fruits from the end of May
The fertilization
Like all Populus species, quivering aspen are anemophilic, meaning that they have adapted to wind pollination. The male kitten flowers therefore instruct the wind to send their pollen on the way to female flowers.
When the female flowers are fertilized, they also use the wind to reproduce, i.e. to spread the seeds. This means that quivering poplars are not only anemophilic, but also anemochoric.
The fruit cluster, which develops from the end of May, is a capsule fruit of greenish to brownish color with two to four lobes. A single female kitten flower has very many of these capsules. To release the seeds, they open as the fruit ripens. During this time the kittens have a white wooly appearance due to their often spread surface.
Fluffy flying seeds from June
In order to be easily carried away by the wind, the seeds have a fluffy tuft of whitish, fine hair on top. This acts as a kind of sail and ensures a generous spreading radius for the trembling poplar. When seeds end up in rivers, they can be carried much further than the wind alone. As a result, aspen trees have an enormously long range of reproduction.
Because the seeds of the quivering aspen are so numerous, you often experience a real fluff float in June. When you walk through a grove of quivering aspen trees, you come home as if it were snowed in.
