A tree for middle-age

Originally published 28 November 1988

While walk­ing with sev­er­al stu­dents on my col­lege cam­pus I saw at the woods’ edge a spray of gold against a grey Novem­ber sky. It was the witch hazel, that most untyp­i­cal tree, burst­ing riotous­ly into bloom when every­thing else is clos­ing down.

I drew the atten­tion of the stu­dents to the gold­en tree with the pecu­liar habit, but they did not share my enthu­si­asm. And why should they? They are young, in the end­less sum­mer of their lives. The witch hazel, intem­per­ate­ly thumb­ing its nose at impend­ing win­ter, is a tree for the middle-aged.

None of my botan­i­cal hand­books explain why the witch hazel blooms in Octo­ber and Novem­ber, even as its leaves are falling to the ground. Where are the insects that will pol­li­nate the blos­soms? Don­ald Stokes, who has writ­ten a won­der­ful book on wild shrubs and vines, tells of watch­ing witch hazel in bloom and see­ing no vis­i­tors but ants. New Eng­land nat­u­ral­ist Jorie Hun­ken guess­es that late-appear­ing flies may be the pol­li­na­tors. Per­haps the witch hazel is nature’s all-night cafe, where the few insects of ear­ly win­ter can find a bite to eat when the reg­u­lar estab­lish­ments are closed. The tree has these late-sea­son cus­tomers all to itself.

In any oth­er sea­son witch hazel would be incon­spic­u­ous. The “witch” in the tree’s name prob­a­bly derives from the Old Eng­lish “wych,” mean­ing “weak.” The tree is not much more than a sprawl­ing shrub and its blos­soms are unkempt tan­gles of scrag­gly rib­bons. But in spare Novem­ber even this ane­mic dis­play of col­or is wel­come. Stub­born­ly out of step with the sea­sons, the witch hazel is a touch of spring in autumn, a touch of birth in death. Thore­au, with cus­tom­ary tran­scen­dence, called the witch hazel thick­et “a faery place…a part of the immor­tal­i­ty of the soul.”

An explosion of seeds

The spring­like blos­soms are not the only trick by which the tree enlivens Novem­ber. There’s also the ener­getic way it spreads its seeds. The seeds do not quick­ly fol­low the blos­soms, as with more typ­i­cal trees. Instead, the witch hazel hoards its seeds for a full 12 months in urn-like cap­sules. Then, in late Octo­ber or ear­ly Novem­ber, as the leaves fall and blos­soms are appear­ing, last year’s cap­sules open, expos­ing ripe seeds, one or two to a pod. With an audi­ble snap, the pod explodes the seeds into the air. Peo­ple who mea­sure such things say that the seeds can be pro­pelled as far as 20 feet from the tree. After­wards, the open-mouthed cap­sules gape like tiny gar­goyles among the yel­low blossoms.

The Eng­lish “witch hazel” is an elm. Sup­ple branch­es of the Eng­lish tree have long been used for divin­ing, or dows­ing, by water witch­es. The Amer­i­can witch hazel is cred­it­ed with the same water-find­ing prop­er­ties as its Eng­lish name­sake. The dows­er breaks a forked branch from the tree and strips it bare. The stick is sup­posed to dip over under­ground reser­voirs of water.

The use of sticks or rods for div­ina­tion goes back at least to the Greeks and Egyp­tians. In the Mid­dle Ages forked twigs were used in Europe to dis­cov­er under­ground veins of min­er­als. By the 16th cen­tu­ry divin­ing rods were wide­ly used in Eng­land for find­ing hid­den springs, and not long after­wards the sci­en­tif­ic debate began about whether the dowser’s appar­ent skill was due to sor­cery, chance, or a real phys­i­cal effect. Over the years there have been innu­mer­able sci­en­tif­ic inves­ti­ga­tions of dows­ing. The con­sen­sus among 20th cen­tu­ry sci­en­tists is that the art of using sticks to find water has no basis in known laws of nature.

The cham­pi­ons of dows­ing are utter­ly con­vinced the effect is real. Most sci­en­tists would ascribe the dowser’s occa­sion­al suc­cess to luck or com­mon sense. Cer­tain­ly the twig has noth­ing to do with it. Dowsers have been con­sis­tent­ly unsuc­cess­ful in the kind of con­trolled tests that would con­vince a sci­en­tif­ic skeptic.

Long used in folk medicine

But even con­firmed skep­tics will admit that the Hal­loween-bloom­ing witch hazel is a bewitch­ing tree. Its sor­cery cer­tain­ly cheered my spir­its when I saw that won­der­ful yel­low thick­et at the edge of the Novem­ber woods. The late-bloom­ing mag­ic may have some­thing to do with the tree’s attrac­tive­ness to dowsers, and might also explain its long use in folk medicine.

North Amer­i­can Indi­ans used the plant to make a poul­tice for swellings and tumors. In my grand­moth­er’s day, an extract of witch hazel was applied to scraped knees and insect bites. You can still buy “Witch Hazel” at the drug store, but as far as I know chemists have not found any real med­i­c­i­nal prop­er­ties to the plant, aside from a cer­tain astrin­gency due to tan­nin in the bark. The cura­tive prop­er­ties prob­a­bly have more to do with the alco­hol con­tent of the com­mer­cial mix­ture than with any extract of the plant.

Accord­ing to man­u­als of herbal med­i­cine, decoc­tions, teas, and salves of witch hazel are good for loose skin, tired eyes, vari­cose veins, and piles. It’s not sur­pris­ing that folk wis­dom cred­its the late-bloom­ing witch hazel with cures for the mal­adies of mid­dle age. Any tree that puts on such a spring­like show in Novem­ber deserves the admi­ra­tion of all of us who have entered the autumn of our lives.