March - Hazel

Here are fairly typical male Hazel catkins (lambs tails) on a bush by the roadside on the South side of the River Medway just over the Hartlake bridge. Some bushes have virtually finished flowering now,  but this one still has catkins with the tiny flowers at their peak. 

Here is a Hazel bud, Corylus avellana, of fairly typical shape. Note that the later bud scales are fringed with hairs:

The buds are sometimes slightly pointed but still characteristically hazel, including the slightly fringed scales to the bud.

This bud below is infected with Phytoptus avellanae, the Hazel Big Bud Mite, an Eriophyid mite. The highlights in this picture have been darkened a trifle. On the twig I think you can see the two types of hair found on Hazel shoots and petioles, the bases remaining of the silky silvery hairs, together with the stiffer more bristly, maybe glandular, hairs. The bud still has the silky fringes to the scales characteristic of Hazel. According to Wikipedia, two forms of P. avellanae exist, a gall causer and a vagrant form that has a more complex life-cycle and does not form galls. Umm.