Here is the Wikipedia.org link to the myth I thought related to willows, but evidently they turned into an oak and a linden tree (is there some connotations with those types of trees the way willows and poplars are with death?):
Link: Baucis and Philemon
Though there is no connection to willows, I think that the myth has a strong connection with the theme of hospitality in the relation of the pious old couple to Zeus and Hermes (under disguise), so I think it’s a nice connection to what we are learning about in the Odyssey (but under the conditions of the average man, not wealthy and prominent heroes, such as Nestor or Menelaos).
Does this myth ring any bells for you guys?
Thanks for following up on this. I always find it fascinating what registers a mental connection between texts. The vegetation which Odysseus is told by Circe that he will encounter as he pulls ashore beyond the river Oceanus is indeed curious.
The story of Baucis and Philemon is narrated by Ovid (Metamorphoses, 8. 619ff). In Ovid, the symbolism of the vegetation is a little more difficult to pin down because of the complex integration of key themes, especially that of “ars”, the principle of etiology upon which each narrative rests, and the matrixed interrelationship of narratives themselves. You may be right to point us in the direction of examining it; but, I hesitate to make too quick a connection to Od. x.
Once one sees the theme of xenia, one notices that it is quite a ubiquitous one in classical texts!! Thanks for drawing our attention to another example.