These hornbeams are lionesses of trees, the smooth bark of their bodies and limbs rippling with the big-cat character of finely honed muscles and taut sinews. Planted along the north-west boundary by long-dead woodsmen, they were tamed and ultimately abandoned to run wild.
Human hands once bowed the boughs to lie horizontally in a bid to make a layered hedge. Still prostrate, and thick as the torsos of the men who laid them low, they have long since liberated their offshoots to sprout skywards.
Other trees were coppiced to the base and then forgotten. Some of the stumps sprayed out multiple trunks, each attaining the diameter of an adult tree. In some cases, the sister stems grew up so close together that they intertwined, and found strength in mutual support, and there they stay, locked in a permanent sensuous sway, their wood exceptionally hard and durable.
Where the hornbeams run out, a broad path sweeps towards the main ride, the backbone of the wood. At the junction, a little girl approaches us, dangling a fresh-picked sprig of catkins between thumb and forefinger, jiggling it at us for attention. “Did you know they’re called lambs’ tails?” I ask. She runs back to her adults and I hear a breathless “Lambs’ tails!” Once learned, never forgotten.
The parent hazel bush sports a whole flock of catkins. Striking, yes, but also strangely blurred, as if painterly dabs had created an impressionistic show. No matter how hard I squint and strain, I cannot bring them into focus. Only when I am close enough to resolve the indentations and crenellations of individual spikes does the picture become sharp.
A red ribbon twist of bryony berries is woven deeper within the bush, but I have eyes only for hundreds and hundreds of tails. When the wind whispers, they synchronise a group quiver, and when it drops they hang loose in anticipation. They are paler than a fortnight ago, lightened with maturity. I reach up and one laps weightless over my cold finger. A gentle squeeze spills a dust of bright yellow pollen. How wonderful to find a tree readying for spring in the depth of winter.
