Addisonia ' 35 



(Plate 98) 



HAMAMELIS JAPONIC A 

 Japanese Witch Hazel 



Family HamamkudacEa^ Witch-hazeIv Family 



Hamamelis japonica Sieb. & Zucc. Abhandl. Akad. Muench. 4: 193. 1843. 

 Hamamelis arborea Masters, Gard. Chron. 35: 187. 1874. 



A shrub or small tree, sometimes attaining a height of thirty 

 feet, with rather stout ascending or spreading branches which are 

 covered with a brown bark, the young branchlets, leaf -buds, flower- 

 stalks, and bracts pubescent with brown hairs. The leaves, which 

 appear much later than the flowers, are alternate and on pubescent 

 stalks one quarter to three eighths of an inch long. The glabrous 

 or pubescent leaf-blades are oval to broadly ovate or obovate, or 

 even nearly orbicular, with the margins sinuately crenate, and the 

 veins very prominent beneath; they are from two to four inches 

 long and sometimes nearly as wide, with the apex acute and the 

 inequilateral base rounded or obtuse. The flower-heads, arranged 

 singly or in clusters of two or three, are subtended by orbicular 

 bracts and are on pubescent commonly curved stalks. When spread 

 out the calyx is about a third of an inch across, with the elliptic 

 obtuse lobes densely brown pubescent on the outside, glabrous and 

 purple within. The yellow petals are narrowly linear, undulate, 

 and a half inch to sometimes three quarters of an inch long. The 

 stamens are about half as long as the sepals, the anthers purplish, 

 the filaments yellowish. The hairy ovary is of two carpels, each 

 with a slender purple style. The pubescent fruit is about a half 

 inch long, surrounded at the base by the persistent calyx-tube, 

 the carpels united nearly to the summit, the free portions forming 

 spreading or reciurved horns. 



This native of the mountainous woods of Japan is one of the most 

 attractive shrubs of our gardens. At home it flowers in March 

 and April, but here it shows a tendency to break into blossom much 

 earher than this; in 1916 its golden flowers appeared in January 

 on a specimen in the fruticetum collection of the New York Botan- 

 ical Garden, and persisted well into February through a heavy 

 snowfall, the bright blossoms forming a striking contrast with the 

 wintery surroundings. Not only does the early appearance of its 

 blossoms make it welcome, but their brightness and profusion 

 make it doubly so. 



While this Japanese plant is among the first to tell us that winter 

 is waning, and that spring will be here ere long, its close relative, 

 Hamamelis virginiana, a native of the eastern parts of our own 

 country, is the latest to flower of our eastern shrubs, its flowers 

 appearing late in the fall and sometimes persisting into early winter. 



