40 Fun Facts About Willow Trees

Which sports implement is traditionally made of white willow, a light wood that resists denting?

The cricket bat has a blade cut from a fast-growing variety of white willow, chosen because it neither dents much nor splinters when a hard ball hits it at speed.

A compound first found in willow bark was the chemical forerunner of which painkiller launched by Bayer?

Aspirin takes its name not from willow but from Spiraea, the old botanical name of meadowsweet, another plant that yields the same kind of compound.

Which Disney animated film features Grandmother Willow, a talking tree who advises its young heroine?

Pocahontas turns to Grandmother Willow in times of doubt; Linda Hunt voiced the tree, which grew out of a concept sketch of a sawn-off trunk.

In the Harry Potter stories, a secret tunnel beneath the Whomping Willow leads to which building in Hogsmeade?

The Shrieking Shack hid the young werewolf Remus Lupin during his monthly transformations, and the howling that villagers heard gave the house its fearsome reputation.

Despite a scientific name pointing to Babylon, the weeping willow first came from the north of which Asian country?

China is the weeping willow's homeland; traders carried it west along the Silk Road, and it reached England from Aleppo in Syria in 1730.

Which Ojibwe protective charm is traditionally a willow hoop strung with a woven web and hung over a cradle?

The dreamcatcher began as a spider-web charm for infants: mothers and grandmothers bent willow into a hoop and wove sinew or plant cord across it.

A weeping willow shaded the first grave of which exiled ruler on the remote Atlantic island of Saint Helena?

Napoleon lay beneath the willow from 1821 until France brought his remains home in 1840, when sailors shared out the wood of a dead tree from the grave.

Which Shakespeare character drowns when a willow branch breaks and drops her into a brook?

Ophelia's death happens offstage: Queen Gertrude reports that she had climbed a willow beside the water when the bough gave way.

Willow roots spread so aggressively that a tree planted near a house is notorious for invading what?

Sewer pipes of old clay or concrete leak at the joints, which draws willow roots in until they clog the line; modern PVC pipes are far less prone to it.

Which French Impressionist painted a series of weeping willows beside his water-garden pond at Giverny?

Claude Monet painted the willows around his pond in the last years of the First World War, drawing on the tree's old role as a symbol of mourning to voice his own grief.

What name is given to the fuzzy, petal-less flower clusters that willows produce in early spring?

Catkins take their name from an old Dutch word for kitten, either for their soft fur or because the longer kinds hang like a kitten's tail.

Which British author wrote The Wind in the Willows, the riverbank tale of Mole, Ratty, Badger and Toad?

Kenneth Grahame first told the adventures as bedtime stories for his young son Alastair, then carried them on in letters while a long holiday kept them apart.

What name is given to the material made by weaving thin willow rods into baskets and furniture?

Wicker suits willow because the pliable rods rarely split as they are woven and can be bent around the sharp corners of a basket.

Artists sketch with thin sticks made from willow, sold as which soft black drawing material?

Charcoal made from willow sticks is a studio staple, and the kind burnt from white willow was once important for making gunpowder too.

Willow is one of the Four Species, with citron and myrtle, waved in a ceremony during which Jewish festival?

Sukkot worshippers wave the bundle in all four directions and up and down, in part as a prayer for enough rain in the year ahead.

The willow ptarmigan, a grouse that winters on willow buds, is the official bird of which US state?

Alaska's state bird moults from summer brown to winter white, and the adults then live largely on the buds of willows and other dwarf shrubs.

The Arctic willow grows farther north than any other woody plant, reaching the north coast of which island?

Greenland's north coast is the limit of land for the Arctic willow, a creeping shrub so slow-growing that one plant on the island was found to be 236 years old.

Which fast-growing trees, a group that includes aspens and cottonwoods, share a plant family with the willows?

Poplars and willows together make up the traditional willow family, and the bark and leaves of both contain the same bitter compound.

Which Latin word, used by the ancient Romans for willow trees, is now the scientific name of the willow genus?

Salix was the Romans' own word for willow; its Old English cousin survives in sallow, the name still given to broad-leaved willows.

What traditional name is given to the strong, flexible willow stems cut for basketmaking and thatching?

Withies gave their name to places such as Wythenshawe in Manchester, and the stems were also used to mark minor tidal channels in British harbours.

The Willow pattern, a blue-and-white scene of a bridge, two birds and a leaning tree, is a classic design on what?

Ceramic tableware bearing the Willow pattern has come out of English potteries since the late 1700s, and romantic legends were invented about the scene to boost sales.

In The Lord of the Rings, who frees Merry and Pippin after Old Man Willow traps the hobbits inside his trunk?

Tom Bombadil arrives and sings to the ancient tree until it lets the hobbits go; Tolkien had introduced both characters in a 1934 poem, years before the novel.

In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry and Ron crash what into the Whomping Willow?

A Ford Anglia enchanted to fly carries the pair to school after they miss the train, and filming the crash scene destroyed 14 of the cars.

In which Shakespeare tragedy does the doomed heroine sing the Willow Song on the night her husband kills her?

Othello gives the Willow Song to Desdemona in Act 4; it was not Shakespeare's own creation but a ballad his audience already knew well.

On which Christian feast do many Eastern European churchgoers carry pussy willow branches to be blessed?

Palm Sunday calls for palm fronds, which do not grow so far north, so the furry-budded willow shoots of early spring stand in for them.

One of the oldest known willow artefacts, dug from a Karelian swamp and over 10,000 years old, is what?

The fishing net, found by a farmer digging a ditch in 1913, was knotted from willow and stretched nearly 30 metres, with a mesh sized for salmon and bream.

In Japanese tradition, which supernatural beings are popularly said to appear wherever a willow grows?

Ghosts and willows go together in Japanese folklore; one famous tale, Green Willow, has a samurai fall for a woman whose spirit is bound to a willow.

Which orange-and-black butterfly, a famous lookalike of the monarch, raises its caterpillars on willow leaves?

The viceroy was long thought a harmless impostor, but birds find it just as unpalatable as the monarch, so each species protects the other.

Some makers use willow for the backs, sides and linings of which stringed instrument?

Double bass repairers reach for willow too, cutting it into the splines and blocks that hold an ageing instrument together.

The dwarf willow of Arctic and alpine tundra creeps along the ground and rarely grows taller than what?

6 centimetres is about its limit, as the branches creep just under the ground; some patches in Italy's Apennines are at least 2,000 years old.

Which pruning method, long used on willows, removes the upper branches so a dense head of new shoots grows?

Pollarding kept the regrowth above the reach of grazing animals, which would browse the shoots of a tree cut at ground level, and it tends to make trees live longer.

Which small, rounded boat of Welsh rivers is traditionally built on a frame of split, interwoven willow rods?

The coracle is light enough to be carried on the back, and its flat, keel-less bottom floats in only a few inches of water.

Clergyman Edward Stone tried willow bark on fevers because its bitter taste recalled which malaria remedy?

Cinchona, the Peruvian tree that yields quinine, tasted just as bitter, so Stone dosed about fifty feverish patients with powdered willow and wrote to the Royal Society in 1763.

Legend says every weeping willow in England descends from a cutting planted by which 18th-century poet?

Alexander Pope is said to have begged one of the stems tying up a parcel sent from Spain to Lady Suffolk, planted it and watched it thrive.

Which naturalist named the weeping willow after Babylon, wrongly believing it was the tree in Psalm 137?

Carl Linnaeus assumed the weeping tree was the one on which the exiles hung their harps by the rivers of Babylon, but those trees were not willows at all.

Willows planted along rivers to control erosion were later declared Weeds of National Significance in which country?

Australia's catchment authorities have since been pulling willows out across the south of the country and replacing them with native trees.

In World War II, British basket makers wove willow into containers for supplies delivered by which method?

Parachute baskets of willow were light, strong and bounced on impact, and some 7,000 British basket makers turned out about 2,000 tonnes of them a year.

Which upscale Tokyo shopping district is well known for its long tradition of willow-lined streets?

Ginza puts its willows to work as well as on show: a kimono retailer there has run willow-dyeing lessons for local schoolchildren.

Which of the Seven Hills of Rome takes its name from the Latin word for osier, a shrubby willow?

The Viminal is the smallest of the seven hills, and its name lives on in Italian politics, where Il Viminale means the Ministry of the Interior.

Which term describes all of the first weeping willows brought to England from Syria, as willows have separate sexes?

Female clones were all that arrived: spread by cuttings rather than seed, and with no males of their own kind, they could cross only with other willows.