Leaves generally round in outline, truncate or slightly heart-shaped at base, deeply 5—7-lobed, with acutely pointed divisions finely serrate with rounded appressed teeth, when they unfold pilose on the lower surface, soon becoming glabrous with the exception of large tufts of pale rufous hairs in the axils of the principal veins, at maturity thin, bright green, smooth and lustrous, 6′—7′ across, with broad primary veins and finely reticulate veinlets; exhaling when bruised a pleasant resinous fragrance; in the autumn turning deep crimson; petioles slender, covered at first near the base with rufous caducous hairs, and 5′—6′ in length; stipules entire, glabrous, ⅓′—½′ long. Flowers: staminate in terminal racemes 2′—3′ long covered with rufous hairs, in heads stalked toward the base of the raceme and nearly sessile above, ¼′ in diameter, and surrounded by ovate acute deciduous hairy bracts much larger than the lanceolate acute bracts of the female inflorescence ½′ across and conspicuous from the broad stigmatic surfaces of the recurved and contorted styles. Fruit 1′—1½′ in diameter, persistent during the winter, the carpels opening in the autumn; seed ½′ long and rather longer than its wing, with a light brown coat conspicuously marked by oblong resin-ducts.
A tree, 80°—140° high, with a straight trunk 4°—5° in diameter, slender branches forming while the tree is young a pyramidal head, and in old age a comparatively small oblong crown, and slender branchlets containing a large pith, slightly many-angled, covered when they first appear with caducous rufous hairs, light orange color to reddish brown in their first winter, marked by occasional minute dark lenticels and by large arcuate leaf-scars showing the ends of 3 conspicuous fibro-vascular bundles, developing in their second season corky wings appearing on the upper side of lateral branches in 3 or 4 parallel ranks and irregularly on all sides of vertical branches, and increasing in width and thickness for many years, sometimes becoming 2′—3′ broad and 1′ thick. Winter-buds acute, ¼′ long, and covered by ovate acute minutely apiculate orange-brown scales rounded on the back, those of the inner rows accrescent, tipped with red, and about 1′ long at maturity. Wood heavy, hard, straight, close-grained, not strong, bright brown tinged with red, with thin almost white sapwood of 60—70 layers of annual growth; used for the outside and inside finish of houses, in cabinet-making, for street pavement, wooden dishes, and fruit boxes.
Distribution. Fairfield County, Connecticut, and in the neighborhood of the coast to southeastern Pennsylvania, southward to Cape Canaveral and the shores of Tampa Bay, Florida, and westward through southern Ohio, Indiana and Illinois to southeastern Missouri, and through Arkansas to eastern Oklahoma and the valley of the Trinity River, Texas; reappearing on the mountains of central and southern Mexico and on the highlands of Guatemala; in the maritime region of the south Atlantic and Gulf states and in the basin of the lower Mississippi River one of the common trees of the forest, covering rich river bottom-lands usually inundated every year; in the northern and middle states on the borders of swamps and low wet swales; at the north rarely more than 60°—70° tall, with a trunk usually not more than 2° in diameter.
Unsurpassed in the brilliancy of the autumnal colors of the leaves; and often planted as an ornamental tree in the eastern states.
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).