The deletions included acorn, adder, ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup, catkin, conker, cowslip, cygnet, dandelion, fern, hazel, heather, heron, ivy, kingfisher, lark, mistletoe, nectar, newt, otter, pasture and willow.
In Betula the bracts of the catkins are deciduous, and the mature catkin shatters to release the winged fruit.
Ash, beech, acorn, conker and catkin have all been chopped.
"What's a catkin?" is his first question.
I won't go through all of the words mentioned, but here are a the graphs for pasture, buttercup, fern, and catkin: The unfortunate truth is that most of the words I tried from Macfarlane's list have fallen considerably in usage since the mid 20th century.
Back in 2008, Henry Porter listed in the Observer some of the words that had been dropped from the then current edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary, among them catkin, minnow, acorn, buttercup, heron, porpoise, raven, blackberry and conker.
The chief features of the members of Amentiferae were staminate flowers, and frequently also pistillate flowers, in catkins, reduced or absent sepals and petals, and a general trend toward wind pollination (anemophily).
Pussy willows, the male form of several shrubby species, have woolly catkins that are considered a harbinger of spring.
The catkins are formed before the leaves appear.
It differs from other trees in the birch family in that male catkins are not formed until the spring in which they mature.
In late winter a profusion of yellow male catkins and smaller, red-centred clusters of female flowers appears on the same tree.
