AMENTIFERZ. 7a 
Stipules oblong, obtuse. Cupule in fruit open and irregularly laciniate, 
about as long as the nut. 
In woods, thickets, and hedges. Common, and generally dis- 
tributed. 
England, Scotland, Ireland. Shrub. Early Spring. 
A bushy shrub or small tree, 3 to 10 feet high or more, with 
smooth grey bark; the branches of the year clothed with down, inter- 
’ mixed with gland-tipped bristles. Leaves shortly stalked, distichous, 
2! to 4 inches long, slightly unequal at the base, doubly serrate, the 
secondary veins running straight through the midrib to the margins. 
Male catkins appearing in autumn, in the axils of the leaves, on the 
shoots of the year, usually 2 or 3 together in a very short raceme, but 
not opening until the end of winter or commencement of spring, when 
they become pendulous and 1} to 2} inches long: catkin-scales pale 
yellow, with purplish tips, downy, wedgeshaped, with 2 smaller floral- 
scales adnate to their inside: stamens attached to the smaller scales 
along their line of junction; anthers pale yellow, slightly bearded at 
the apex. Female flowers from solitary scaly buds resembling the 
leaf-buds, from which the crimson stigmas are protruded. Leaves 
rather dull green, paler beneath, finely pubescent, pilose on the petiole 
and veins beneath. Nuts 2 or 3 together, 3 to } inch long, greenish 
until nearly ripe, at last brown, with a large basal scar. 
French, Coudrier noisetier. German, Gemeine Hasel. 
The varieties of the hazel under cultivation are numerous, but are represented by 
the cobnut and filbert. The name filbert was formerly spelt jilberd and fylberde, and 
is said to have been so called after a King Philibert, or it is more probably a corruption 
of full-beard, alluding to the husk; but the old English poet Gower assigns to the 
name a more poetical origin :— 
* Phillis 
Was shape into a nutte tree, 
That all men it might see; 
And after Phillis, Philiberd 
This tree was classed.” 
The name Avellana is said by Pliny, according to Professor Targioni, to be derived 
from Abellina in Asia, supposed to be the valley of Damascus, its native country. He 
adds, that it had been brought into Greece from Pontus, hence it was called Nuw 
Ponteia. The nuts were called by Theophrastus, Heracleotic nuts, from Heraclea, now 
Ponderachi, on the Asiatic shores of the Black Sea. Others admit that a variety of 
hazel-nut or filbert was brought from Pontus to Abella, a town in Campania, and 
hence the name Avellana was applied to these trees. In France, at the present 
day, the best varieties are called Avelines. But the above indications of an Hastern 
origin can only refer to particular kinds, for the species, it is well known, is common 
enough in Italy, as well as other parts of Europe. It is also found over a great part 
of Asia in a wild indigenous state. It bears the common names of hazel, hazle, or 
z2 
