XXII. THE COMMON WITCH-HAZEL. AIT 
low hues of the falling leaves there is no more remarkable 
object than the witch-hazel, in the moment of parting with its 
foliage, putting forth a profusion of gaudy, yellow blossoms, 
and giving to November the counterfeited appearance of spring. 
It 1s a bushy tree, sending up a number of oblique trunks, 
about the size of a man’s arm or larger.” 
The union, on the same individual plant, of blossoms, fading 
leaves, and ripe fruits, not very common in any climate, and 
occurring in no other instance in ours, led Linnezus to give to 
this American plant, a Greek name significant of the fact of its 
producing “ flowers together with the fruit.” 
The witch-hazel is usually found within or on the borders of 
moist woods, or among the scattered trees and shrubs which 
often clothe the steep banks of small streams. It rises to the 
height of from ten to twenty feet. In Essex woods, Mr. Oakes 
pointed out to me one which exceeded twenty-two feet, and 
was ten inches in circumference. The stem, which is seldom 
erect, is covered with a brownish, ash-colored, rather smooth 
bark; the branchlets of a lghter brown, with orange dots. 
The branches are long and pliant, with an upward curvature. 
The secondary branches are regularly alternate and lateral, 
those at the distance of one third its length from the end of a 
branch being longest. The leaves are lateral and alternate, or 
collected in tufts on the ends of the branches. ‘They are on 
very short foot-stalks; irregularly obovate or rhomboidal, ine- 
quilateral, the lower side larger, lower on the stall and half- 
heart-shaped, the upper side narrower, and rounded or wedge- 
shaped at base; acuminate, irregularly toothed or sinuate, the 
four or five principal veins on each side forming large teeth, 
downy, at last smooth above, with a ferruginous, stellate pubes- 
cence on the mid-rib, footstalk and veins beneath, the upper 
surface a dull green, the lower brighter and more shining. 
Stipules lanceolate, acute, coriaceous, haif as long as the foot- 
stalk, which 1s one fourth or one third as long as the leaf. At 
the time when the flowers are expanding, the leaves become of 
a delicate leather yellow. 
The flower-buds are already formed in August. ‘The flow- 
ers expand, sometimes as early as September, or as late as 
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