Country diary: Corkscrew hazel has a story to tell that's as convoluted as its limbs | Phil Gates

Crook, County Durham: The tree currently wafting out clouds of golden pollen is also called Harry Lauder's Walking Stick. But why?There have been some fine displays of catkins in hedgerows here, but none compares with the corkscrew hazel flowering outside my window. It's a mutant form of native hazel, with a compact canopy of sinuous branches that have lost all sense of direction: they spiral, twist, curl, bend and sometimes double back on themselves. For the last two weeks, they have been smothered in a curtain of long golden catkins. This afternoon, tree sparrows are using the tree as a staging post, en route to the bird feeders. When they land the catkins dance, shedding ephemeral, will-o'-the-wisp clouds of golden pollen.Corkscrew hazel is horticultural Marmite: some gardeners love its sculptural quality in winter, especially when it is iced with a light fall of snow; others dislike its grotesquely distorted, dark green, hispid summer foliage. But it has a story to tell that is as convoluted as its limbs. It might have languished unnoticed in a hedgerow, but for a passerby with an eye for the unusual, a generous vicar-botanist, a music hall celebrity and generations of gardeners skilled in the ancient art of grafting. Continue reading...