April - Hazel

The hazel (Corylus avellana) buds are swelling rapidly just prior to proper opening. They are now large enough to "fill" the platforms they are sitting on. The silky haired leaves are creeping out from between the bud scales. Notice how, as the bud scales move apart, they expose their previously hidden apple-green basal sections, below the tan-brown uppers:

This bud is from the same plant, but in a terminal position on a different shoot. Not an aphid egg there by any chance? The expanding leaf looks even silkier from this angle:

and another. The young leaves always seem to be slightly asymmetric from the bud scale they are protruding from:

and yet another. In all these examples there do not seem to be any silky leaves underneath the basal two or three scales of the bud.

This seems to chime with quite an old book by Sir John Lubbock published about 1899 by Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co, London, called "On buds and stipules" that refers to bud-scales as stipules "the first four pairs are without leaves. The fifth have a well-formed leaf. The second pair and following stipules are fringed with fine hairs around the edge."

The book goes on to say: "the stem and petioles have two kinds of hairs: 1. fine, silky, white and more or less adpressed and 2. reddish, upright glandular hairs.

The young shoot bends over downwards for protection from the cold. The leaves are conduplicate, The stipules are often beautifully pink. "

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.

September - Hazel

Interesting shot of a hazel bud in the axil of a leaf - and intriguing to see the colours of the minute hairs on the stem and the petiole:

This shows the coarse hairs you do get on hazel shoots, and apparently petioles: