THE HAZEL, 



Cor'ylus Avella'na. 



The Hazel seldom, has the habit or dimensions of 

 a tree. It is generally a shrub, sending up many 

 slender limbs remarkable for their brown bark and 

 their great flexibility. At Eastwell Park, Kent, 

 however, it is a tree thirty feet in height, with a 

 girth of three feet at the ground. 



The young twigs are hairy and glandular and of 

 a rusty-brown hue, and the blunt rounded buds 

 have their scales fringed with reddish glandular 

 hairs. The flowers appear in January, or ex- 

 ceptionally even as early as October, but are most 

 frequently not open until March, whilst the leaves 

 do not open until the end of April or beginning 

 of Ma} r . The male and female blossoms occur on 

 the same tree, but in distinct clusters or " catkins." 



The male catkins are pendulous, first appearing- 

 as minute sausage-shaped buds of a dull brownish 

 hue, but lengthening to two inches or more, and 

 becoming, when the anthers are fully matured, of 

 a pale greenish-yellow or primrose colour, which is 

 more decidedly green when the pollen has been 

 shed. Each catkin consists of a number of bract- 

 like scales, each of these bearing eight anthers on 

 its inner surface, so that a cloud of fine-grained 

 yellow pollen is shaken from them by the March 

 gales, after discharging which they drop off. 



28 57 



