Along with its birch-family cousin hazel (Corylus avellana), the alder is one of our first trees to bloom. Its light, wind-blown pollen provides essential forage for emerging bee queens. When fertilised, the female flowers, currently inconspicuous, swell into fleshy grape-sized green cones – casings for seed much loved by hungry finches. I’m always struck by the clusters of spent cones, now darkened and woody, that linger on the branches into the following spring, often right next to the new catkins. Their fragile, rattly presence is an easy way to spot this unshowy but ecologically important species.