Plate VITHE HAZEL1. Hazel Bush2. Leaf Spray with Nuts3. Stamen Catkin4. Seed Catkins5. Hazel Nuts
Plate VI
THE HAZEL1. Hazel Bush2. Leaf Spray with Nuts3. Stamen Catkin4. Seed Catkins5. Hazel Nuts
In damp places beside streams, or on light soil close to quarries, or among broken rockyground, the Hazel thrives, and many are the happy afternoons spent by children of all ages gathering nuts in the Hazel coppice. This is the only tree we have which produces food good to eat in its wild state.
You will not find the Hazel difficult to recognise at any time of year. Before the month of January is over you will notice a pair of long brown caterpillars dangling in the wind from many of the Hazel twigs: lamb’s tails, the country children call them, but their correct name is Hazel catkins; and like those of the Birch tree, they have been hanging on the tree all winter, but were so small that you did not notice them.
In summer, if you look carefully, you find many tiny green stamen catkins growing between the foot of the leaf stalk and the branch. These green cones grow very, very slowly all autumn and winter, and when January is nearly over they change into these dangling tails or hanging catkins (3), and their tightly-folded scales begin to unclose. Behind these scales lie eight stamens, each of which has a bright yellow head. These yellow heads are filled with fine powder, and when ripe they burst, and the fine powder is shaken out by the wind. Soon after, the catkin turns brown and shrivelled, and before very long it falls off; its work for the year is over.
When the snowdrops bloom, in the end of January, the other Hazel flowers or seed catkinsare ready. They are not easily seen, so you must look for them carefully. On each side of the stalk you will find a small scale-covered bud (4), and at the tip of this bud rises a tuft of crimson threads. Inside this scale-covered bud are the seeds, and from the top of each seed rise two crimson threads. On windy days the fine powder from the yellow stamen heads is shaken over these crimson threads, which carry it to the young seeds hidden beneath the scaly covering. As spring advances this crimson tuft disappears and the bud busies itself making the seed, which must be ready by autumn. The covering of the seed hardens like a nut: at first this nut is pale green, but in winter it becomes a glossy russet brown.
Inside this nut (5) lies the kernel of the seed, and it is this sweet kernel which is the fruit we eat. Meantime the scaly leaves, which formed the covering of the young bud, have grown much larger: they have become tough and leathery, and their ends are deeply divided, as if they were torn. In the Filbert Hazel, which is a cousin of the common Hazel and very like it, these leathery coverings conceal the nut. But in the common or Cobnut Hazel they form a cup in which the nut sits in the same way as the acorn does in its cup.
The leaves (2) of the Hazel appear in early spring. They are rounded leaves, sometimes slightly heart-shaped, and they have two rows of teeth cut round the edge. Each leaf is rough andhairy, and is covered with a network of veins which seems to pucker the leaf. At first the young leaf stalk and branches are covered with fine down, but this soon wears off. Notice how many long, straight shoots rise from the ground beside the Hazel roots. On these Hazel shoots the leaves are placed in two rows on each side of the shoot, with the leaves not opposite each other, but alternate. The shoots make good baskets, and hoops, and hurdles, because they can be so easily bent into many shapes without breaking. The branches of the Hazel bush have the same good qualities, and they are valuable for fishing rods and walking-sticks, and such purposes, where toughness and elasticity are needed.
The Hazel leaves hang longer on the tree than most other leaves. The frost changes their colour from a dull grey-green to a pale yellow, but still they cling to their stalks till the winter wind strips them from the branches.
It is said that Hazel shoots or twigs have the power of showing where water is concealed. In places where there are no lakes, or rivers, or streams near at hand, water is got by digging wells deep down into the ground, and so allowing the stores which are hidden there to rise to the surface. But it is not everywhere that these hidden supplies will be found, and as digging a well costs a great deal of money, people are unwilling to begin the work unless they are likelyto succeed. So they send for a man who is called a diviner, because he divines or guesses where water will be found. He walks across the fields carrying a Hazel rod in his hand, and when he reaches a spot where water lies beneath, the Hazel rod changes position in his hand and the well is sunk at the spot which the diviner points out. So the story goes.
For many generations it was a custom in this country to burn Hazel nuts on the night of October 31, All-Hallow Eve. Friends would meet together late in the evening, and each person would place two nuts as near together as possible in a clear red fire. The nuts were supposed to represent the two friends, and if they burned quietly and evenly, then the future was sure to be happy; but if they flared angrily or sputtered hissingly, especially if they burst with a loud report, then misfortune was supposed to follow the friends.
Hazel nuts are eagerly devoured by squirrels and dormice, and there is one bird, the Nuthatch, that is very busy and grows sleek and fat when the Hazel fruit is ripe. This bird breaks off a nut branch and flies away with it to an old oak tree. There he strips off the covering of leaves and cleverly places the bare nut in a crevice of the rough oak trunk. Then with his strong bill he hammers at the shell till it breaks and he can get at the nut inside. On still October daysin the quiet woods you will hear his bill tap-tapping from the trunk of the oak tree.