22 Hamamelis Virginica.
same hue and sienna-brown. A small blue lichen often invests even
the smallest twigs. Leaves large, smooth, broad-ovate, unevenly cordate
at base, terminating in an obtuse point; irregularly and largely
toothed; the teeth sometimes acute, often obtuse. Costa prominent
beneath, sending off on either side, alternately at acute angles, five or
six nerves. Flowers situated on short foot-stalks in clusters along the
ends of the branches. Calices at first small, afterwards enlarging with
the approach of the fruit to maturity, consisting of thick scales, externally
pubescent. Stamens generally four, shorter than the cali-
cine segments. Petals gamboge-yellow, linear, obtuse, from half to
three-quarters of an inch long, involuted at their ends. The germ enlarges
slowly, requiring a whole year to bring it to maturity, at the expiration
of this time it becomes a hard, ovate nut of an ochre-yellow
colour, and invested externally with a dense, short pubescence, notched
at the apex in the line of a subsequent fissure dividing the nut into
two halves, on the occurrence of which the seeds, four in number, are
thrown out. This opened nut remains for the most part on the
branches long after the succeeding period of florescence, becoming
after the seeds are dropped of a bistre-brown colour. Hence the
flowers and fruit are found on the shrub at the same time, which has
given origin to the generic appellation Hamamelis— being an
ancient Greek name from A/**, accompanying, and m » , or tmn, an apple
tree, because the plant which bore it blossomed at the same time.
This is supposed by modem Botanists to have been the Mespilus
Amelanchier or something near it. Linnaeus finding the name unoc-
Hamamelis Virginica. 23
cupied, fixed upon it for a new American shrub which Mitchell had
called in his letters Trilopus. The reason of its application in the present
instance seems to be, that as the fruit is a whole year in ripening,
it accompanies the flowers in autumn, which are destined to produce
the next year’s fruit. The shrub begins to bloom generally in October,
while the leaves have either fallen, or are for the most part yellow and
decayed—and continues flowering in favourable situations all winter.
It inhabits stony ground, generally near the sunny borders of water
courses.
The divining rods formerly used by impostors, who pretended to
find precious ores, were made of the twigs of this tre e ; and, in some
parts of the United States the credulous vulgar are still imposed on by
persons who pretend to find water by the indication of its branches.
For this purpose a forked branch is used and twirled between the
fingers and thumbs of both hands, during the muttering of some
mystical words, when, in the spot towards which the point of the bifurcation
drops or points, water is said by them to exist. Hence the
name Witch Hazel.
The figure represents a terminal flowering twig of the size of nature,
culled on the 20th of October.
von. m. 7