2. HAMAMELIS L. Witch Hazel.
Trees or shrubs, with scaly bark, terete zigzag branchlets, naked buds, and fibrous roots. Leaves involute in the bud, more or less unsymmetrical at base, crenately toothed or lobed, the primary veins conspicuous; stipules acute, infolding the bud, deciduous. Flowers perfect, autumnal or hiemal, in 3 or rarely 4-flowered terminal clusters, from buds appearing in summer, on short recurved peduncles from the axils of leaves of the year, furnished near the middle with 2 acute deciduous bractlets, covered like their acute bracts and bractlets with dark ferrugineous pubescence, each flower surrounded by 2 or 3 ovate acute bracts, the outer slightly united at base into a 3-lobed involucre; calyx 4-parted pale pubescent on the outer surface, orange-brown, yellow or red on the inner surface, persistent on the base of the ovary, the lobes reflexed; petals bright yellow, inserted on the margin of the cup-shaped receptacle, alternate with the sepals, strap-shaped, falling with the stamens when the ovules are fertilized; stamens 8, inserted in 2 rows on the margin of the receptacle, the 4 opposite the lobes of the calyx fertile, the others reduced to minute strap-shaped scales; filaments free, shorter than the calyx, prolonged into a thickened pointed connective; anthers ellipsoid, opening laterally from without by persistent valves; ovary of 2 carpels, free at apex, inserted in the bottom of the receptacle, partly superior, remaining during the winter without enlarging and surrounded and protected by the calyx; styles subulate, spreading, stigmatic at apex, persistent; ovule solitary. Fruit ripening in the autumn, usually 2 from each flower-cluster, capsular, 2-beaked at apex, surrounded for one-third or one-half its length by the enlarged persistent calyx bearing at the base the blackened remnants of the floral bracts, the thick and woody outer layer splitting from above loculicidally before the opening of the thin crustaceous inner layer. Seed oblong, acute, suspended; testa crustaceous, chestnut brown, shining; forcibly discharged when ripe by the contraction of the edges of the valves of the bony endocarp; embryo surrounded by thick fleshy albumen; cotyledons foliaceous; hilum oblong, depressed.
Hamamelis is confined to eastern North America and eastern Asia, with three American and two or three Asiatic species; of the American species two are sometimes small trees, and the third H. vernalis Sarg. is a shrub of southern Missouri, western Arkansas, and eastern Oklahoma.
The name is from άμα, at the same time with, and μηλίς, an Apple-tree, and was applied by the ancients to the Medlar or some similar tree.
CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ARBORESCENT SPECIES.
Leaves smooth, conspicuously unsymmetrical at base; flowers autumnal.1. [H. virginiana] (A, C). Leaves roughened by persistent tubercles, slightly unsymmetrical at base; flowers hiemal.2. [H. macrophylla] (C).
1. [Hamamelis virginiana] L.
Leaves obovate, acuminate, long-pointed or sometimes rounded at apex, very unequal at base, the lower side rounded or subcordate, the upper usually cuneate and smaller, irregularly and coarsely crenately lobed above the middle, entire or dentate below, when they unfold coated, especially on the lower surface of the midrib and veins and on the petioles and stipules with stellate ferrugineous pubescence, at maturity membranaceous, dull dark green and glabrous or pilose above, lighter colored and lustrous below, and pubescent or puberulous on the stout midrib and 6 or 7 pairs of primary veins, 4′—6′ long, 2′—2½′ wide; turning delicate yellow in the autumn; petioles slender, pubescent early in the season, becoming glabrous ⅓′—1′ in length; stipules lanceolate, acute, coriaceous, ⅓′—½′ long. Flowers opening from the middle of September to the middle of November; calyx orange-brown on the inner surface; petals bright yellow; ½′—⅔′ long. Fruit ripening when the flowers of the season are expanding, ½′ long, pubescent, dull orange-brown and surrounded for half its length by the large persistent calyx; seed ¼′ long.
A tree, occasionally 20°—25° high, with a short trunk 12′—14′ in diameter, spreading branches forming a broad open head, and slender flexible branchlets coated at first with scurfy rusty stellate hairs, gradually disappearing during the summer, and in their first winter glabrous or slightly puberulous, light orange-brown and marked by small white dots, becoming in their second year dark or reddish brown; usually a stout shrub sending up from the ground numerous rigid diverging stems 5°—20° tall. Winter-buds acute, slightly falcate, light orange-brown, covered with short fine pubescence, ¼′—½′ long. Bark ⅛′ thick, light brown, generally smooth but broken into minute thin appressed scales disclosing in falling the dark reddish purple inner bark. Wood heavy, hard, very close-grained, light brown tinged with red, with thick nearly white sapwood of 30—40 layers of annual growth. The bark and leaves are slightly astringent and although not known to possess essential properties are largely used in the form of fluid extracts and decoctions and in homœopathic practice, Pond’s Extract being made by distilling the bark in diluted alcohol.
Distribution. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the valley of the St. Lawrence River to southern Ontario, southern Wisconsin, southeastern Minnesota and northeastern Iowa, and southward to central Georgia and southern Arkansas, growing usually on the borders of the forest in low rich soil or on the rocky banks of streams; of its largest size and probably only arborescent on the slopes of the high Alleghany Mountains in North and South Carolina and Tennessee.
Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental plant in the northern states, and in western and northern Europe.
2. [Hamamelis macrophylla] Pursh.
Leaves short-obovate or occasionally broad-elliptic, rounded, acute or rarely acuminate at apex, cuneate, rounded or cordate at the narrow slightly unsymmetrical base, crenate-lobulate above the middle with small rounded lobes, covered with short stellate hairs more abundant on the upper than on the lower surface, and at maturity dark green above, paler below, and roughened by the persistent tubercle-like bases of the stellate hairs, 3′—5′ long, 2′—3′ wide, with a slender midrib and five or six pairs of primary veins; petioles slender, pubescent, ½′—¾′ in length; stipules lanceolate, acuminate, scarious, hoary-pubescent, ⅕′—⅙′ long. Flowers opening in December, January and February; calyx yellow on the inner surface; petals light yellow, ½′ long and less than 1/24′ wide. Fruit ripening in the autumn, about ½′ in length; seed dark chestnut-brown or nearly black.
A tree, often 30°—45° high, producing stoloniferous shoots round the tall trunk often 1° in diameter, erect and spreading branches, and branchlets rusty or hoary-tomentose during their first year, becoming glabrous or nearly glabrous and grayish brown in their second season; often a shrub. Winter-buds rusty-tomentose, about ⅓′ in length.
Distribution. Rich soil, by streams or along the borders of the forest; valley of the lower Savannah River, near Savannah, Chatham County, and along the Wittlocoochee River, Lowndes County, Georgia, to central and western Florida; through Alabama; in southern and central Mississippi, and through Louisiana to eastern Texas (Beaumont, Jefferson County, and Fletcher, Harding County), and southern Arkansas; generally distributed and most abundant in Louisiana; probably of its largest size on the bluffs of the Alabama River in Dallas County, Alabama.