A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1083 entries
withies
Withies are long flexible willow rods grown for weaving, cut in winter after the leaves have dropped, when the wood is pliable and the bark will strip. They are grown in beds on wet ground, cut back every year, and sorted by length. They make baskets, eel traps, lobster pots, fences, and coffins.
Etymology
The word is Old English and its root is a very old one, meaning to twist or to bind, the same one behind withe, wither in the sense of a band, and the German word for willow. The related verb sense survives in withy-band and in the old practice of using a twisted rod as a rope, which is what the word originally described.