1. The junior at the hairdresser’s told me how she used to catch the white bits off poplar trees and scrunch them up to make a kind of itching powder [Streatham, London, June 1994].

2. When I was little [c.1940s] my older relatives urged me to collect poplar catkins and put them in a little saucer, carefully mixed with water, for the fairies to eat at night (while I was asleep!). Needless to say the catkins had gone by the morning … I believe it was a fairly common practice among children earlier this century [Sutton, Surrey, August 1993].

Images: main, fallen seeds, Tooting Common, London Borough of Wandsworth, June 2015; inset, catkins, Kensington Gardens, London, April 2015.