Il. 4, THE HAZEL. 171 
Tue American Hazet. C. Americana. Wangenheim. 
The hazel is a small, branched shrub, from three to six feet 
high. ‘The younger branches are gray and hairy, with green, or 
red, gland-bearing hairs, and afterwards become brown, lighter 
below, with orange, or green dots; the stem is dark colored. 
The leaves are broad ovate, or elliptic, heart-shaped at base, 
acuminate, coarsely and irregularly somewhat doubly serrate, 
hairy and rough, at last nearly smooth above, pale and hairy, 
with fine hairs, on the veins, veinlets, and axils beneath. The 
leaf-stalk is short, round, and covered with glandular hairs, 
which are scattered on the mid-rib, and sometimes on the larger 
veins beneath. Stipules broad at base, tapering to a point, 
sometimes toothed and cut, nearly as long as the footstalk. 
The aments of the next year appear in the axils of the leaves 
in August. In March or April, those on which the sterile 
flowers are arranged, are found expanded into slender, cylin- 
drical, tremulous catkins, two or three inches long, terminal, or 
dependent from lateral footstalks, single, or two to five together. 
They consist of deltoid, wedge-shaped, concave, pointed, hairy 
scales, pretty closely and imbricately arranged around a central 
thread, and each containing about eight anthers, attached by a 
short, minute thread, toa delicate, hairy membrane, with which 
it is lined, and which terminates in two scales, just below the 
edge of the outer one. These aments are of a grayish yellow, 
or fawn-color, and hang gracefully on their stalks, moving with 
every wind, and spreading in the air their yellow pollen. 
The fertile flowers are little star-like tufts of crimson stig- 
mas, projecting above a short, scaly bud of numerous scales ; 
the outer scales are broader, and edged with hair, the inner 
ones hairy, lanceolate, and fleshy. In the axil of the central 
scales are the stigmas, which are long and thread-like, and 
divided to their base. The inner scales increase in size with 
the nut, and become the husk, two or three scales, very much 
enlarged, enclosing it entirely, and forming a cap. 
The nut is about three-fourths of an inch in breadth, and 
somewhat less in length, roundish, slightly compressed, with a 
