Easter palm

Easter palms were said to bring about a good harvest when "planted" in a field.

Blessed herbs, such as Easter palms, are burnt after a year.

There are many regional variations between Easter palms in Poland.

In the Kurpie region, the entire length of the Easter palm is often decorated with flowers.

Easter palms are an important feature of Polish Easter celebrations.

An ethnographic museum in Kraków has over 200 Easter palms in its collection.

The area is well known for its craft skills, particularly dried flower compositions and Easter palms (made of dried grasses).

An Easter palm may also sport some decorations, such as ribbons or dried flowers or other plants, with attributed beneficial effects.

On Palm Sunday they bless Easter palms, which they later keep in houses, stuck under the roof.

Moreover Wandzin produce Easter palms.

Traditionally, Easter palms are prepared on Ash Wednesday, from willow branches (with catkins).

Communities of Polish emigrants, such as those in the United States, observe the tradition of making of Easter palms as well.

It is possible that the Easter palm was originally designed by Polish interwar artist Ferdynand Ruszczyc; further historical research is needed.

An annual contest of hothouse-grown Easter palms - the real ones are a rarity in this cold climate, with branches of willow generally used instead - was won in a northern town by a frond a five feet long.

As with some Christian symbols and traditions, the Easter palm's origin can be traced to pagan religions which held the willow to be endowed with beneficial qualities, and to symbolize enduring life, and rebirth.

The rats introduced accidentally as stowaways "used" the palm tree and doubtless other trees for their own purposes: every Easter palm nut that has been recovered shows tooth marks from rats gnawing on it and would have been incapable of germinating.

Subsequent visitors to Easter have found more evidence of the palm, in the form of casts of its trunks buried in Mt. Terevaka's lava flows a few hundred thousand years ago, and casts of its root bundles proving that the Easter palm's trunk reached diameters exceeding seven feet.

Polish countryside, on the face of it Catholic, with a "C+M+B" written in chalk on doors, with aspergillum, with crosses above doors, with blessed Easter palm hung under ceilings in barns, followed the liturgical calendar, took part in church fairs and midnight masses, but in fact had a pagan lining.