by Diana Beresford-Kroeger, Advisor to Archangel Ancient Tree Archive

The black willow carries the honour of being part of a living ritual of thanksgiving which has endured for millennia. In the cycle of yesterday, today and tomorrow the Boreal Cree continue to weave a seven times trinity of twenty-one branches of black willow into a flat tray.

On this structure they burn the open tubular flesh of a polypore mushroom. The resinous smoke rises to the heavens, like the juniper to the sacred Buddha, in an eternal prayer of thanksgiving for the flesh of the bear for food. Such acts serve to remind us on a universal level that all harmony is but a breath away from chaos.

The black willow is called Salix nigra. It is just part of a family structure of some 300 members that have tracked the rivers, lakes, waterways and wetlands all over the globe. They have done this with great success for some 300 million years. They move and change their children by hybridization into trees that do remarkable things for the water, the land and the air. They have not been successful against the hand of man. Their voice is heard only by people who stop and listen with a pure heart, the ones who hear it all.

The whole family of the willow was named by the trading Irish two thousand years ago. They created such a demand for medicine, dyes, baskets and furniture that they were forced to deal with a Frankish people who grew the willow for a living in what is now the Netherlands. Although they traded back and forth across the seas, the early Irish did not respect them because they treated their womenfolk so poorly. An old Irish word, Saileach, describes that abuse exactly. And Saileach became Salix, a word used in science today.

The lord of the wetland is the black willow. This tree loves fresh water. The roots can hang into the water and take hold in the mud. From this wet beginning a solid tree arises with a dark, furrowed bark with ridges so deep that at a distance the shadows make the trunk look black and foreboding. The leaves have a curious limp quality. The green in the leaf is not so strong. But all of that is only a front for what these trees can actually do.

The black willow holds a treasure chest of unique chemicals. In fact each of the 300 members of this family holds variations of chemicals in a genetic pattern common to each individual specie. One of these chemicals is manufactured into a pill in the commercial world. It is called aspirin and is used for aches and pains, colds, and flues. It is also useful for the heart and the circulation. Other chemicals occur in abundance that help the fish in the waters at the feet of the willow. They also aid all other creatures that live in the water. Many more are airborne as medicinal aerosols and others even define the colour patterns on the wings of the butterfly.

Probably the most important function of the black willow is as a source of food. The tree, because of its feet being in the water, acts as a pump. This in turn produces an abundance of energy-rich nectars and amino acid-rich pollens. All of the native pollinators, and there are well over 4,000 of them, use this early food bank. The tree has a certain kind of cunning in protecting this bank against the frost. The catkins manufacture a fur coat seen as the fuzzy trailing catkin. Inside this fuzz the nectar flow is protected. So the bees have an early food source which also carries medicine for them. This is important for their system after a long winter. The pollinators get an early start with the willow all across the world. Without pollinators, there is no fertilization, without fertilization there is no fruit set, without fruit set there is no food,…just hunger waiting.

Another pollinator makes use of the black willow. It is the butterfly. In the wings of the butterfly there is always colour. This helps define the butterfly. It helps to protect it by mimicry and to enable it to survive as a species. In the leaf of the willow there is an unusual agent that helps to form the colour of the wings of the butterfly. It is a chelating agent. It takes the metal the butterfly has ingested from soil or animal or bird manure and tacks it in the middle of a molecule. This is the basis of the colour.

The willow protects the life of the fish population in a strange way. The tree produces antiseptic chemicals that help clean the fresh water of malodurs. Fish track their own pathways for migration and successful spawning using a trail mix of biological scents. The olfactory memory of a fish is very strong. It can be weakened by the presence of pesticides and other toxins in the water. But the willow stands guard over this by supplying counter-irritants, natural oil fixation and cleaner water for the sensing mechanisms of the fish. All of these come from the 30 or so salicylic acid compounds.

The black willow acts as an air cleanser, too. The tree produces a host of labile aerosols in the form of free floating esters. There are perhaps about thirty of them, possibly more. These fast floating chemicals can be experienced near a tree. Their effects can be felt in the mouth by the production of saliva from the salivary glands. The taste is a little sour, perhaps like a diluted aspirin on the tongue. This is why the aboriginal world used the willow as part of a complex medicinal mixture in the treatment of loneliness, a complaint which passes under the radar of the rest of the world.

The willow does one other task to charm the fisherman. It produces a surface active agent that helps in the buoyancy of fish.

The tree called the Black Willow has thought of everything. After all, it is part of the natural world, the divine blessing that is our home. The tree has not as yet competed successfully with the chainsaw. But then, maybe hunger will do that.