Plants and their children

by Frances Theodora Parsons

Fig. 71

Down by the brook and along the sides of the mountain grows a tall shrub which is called the witch-hazel. I hope some of you know it by sight. I am sure that many of you know its name on account of the extract which is applied so often to bruises and burns.

This picture (Fig. [71]) shows you a witch-hazel branch bearing both flowers and fruit; for, unlike any other plant I know, the flower of the witch-hazel appears late in the fall, when its little nuts are almost ripe. These nuts come from the flowers of the previous year.

It is always to me a fresh surprise and delight to come upon these golden blossoms when wandering through the fall woods.

Often the shrub has lost all its leaves before these appear. You almost feel as if the yellow flowers had made a mistake, and had come out six months ahead of time, fancying it to be April instead of October. In each little cluster grow several blossoms, with flower leaves so long and narrow that they look like waving yellow ribbons.

But to-day we wish chiefly to notice the fruit or nut of the witch-hazel.

Now, the question is, how does the witch-hazel manage to send the seeds which lie inside this nut out into the world? I think you will be surprised to learn just how it does this.

If you have a nut before you, you see for yourselves that this fruit is not bright-colored and juicy-looking, or apparently good to eat, and thus likely to tempt either boy or bird to carry it off; you see that it is not covered with hooks that can lay hold of your clothing, and so steal a ride; and you see that it has no silky sails to float it through the air, nor any wings to carry it upon the wind.

And so the witch-hazel, knowing that neither boy nor girl, nor bird nor beast nor wind, will come to the rescue of its little ones, is obliged to take matters into its own hands; and this is what it does. It forces open the ripe nut with such violence, that its little black seeds are sent rattling off into the air, and do not fall to the ground till they have traveled some distance from home. Really they are shot out into the world (Fig. [72]).