This week, I’m featuring Common Witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana). It is one of our local wildflowers that begins to bloom in early October (sometimes in late September) and will typically continue to bloom into November.
American Indians and then colonists used forked limbs of this shrub growing in a north-south orientation to create the divining rods they used for dowsing or “water witching.” When they held the forked stick by the tines, it is said that the stick would bend in the presence of an underground water source. This activity is probably where the common name witch-hazel came from because the plant looked similar enough to the European Wych Elm that the name was applied to this New World plant. “Wych” is from the Anglo-Saxon word for “bend.”
The name was later corrupted to “witch,” but possibly because so many magical properties were also attributed to this species. For example, it is said that the plant is burned or made into an herbal elixir to banish unwanted emotions and to remove hexes, disease, and general negativity.
Witch-hazel is one of the focal species whose phenology (study of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena, especially in relation to climate and plant and animal life) is being monitored at more than two dozen sites across the state by the New York Phenology Project. Learn more about this project or find out how to become involved.
Identification Tips:
Common Witch-hazel is a shrub or small tree up to 20′ tall. It is usually abundantly branched and rather bushy in appearance. The trunk and larger branches are grey, relatively smooth, and slightly wrinkled. The smaller branches and twigs are grey to reddish brown. Its alternate leaves are up to 5″ long and 3″ across; they are oval to broadly ovate in shape and wavy-toothed along their margins.
Small clusters of yellow flowers (that some say have a scent reminiscent of lemon zest) and brown seed capsules develop along the upper branches and twigs. Each flower has 4 slender yellow tape-like petals, about ¾” long; they are often contorted and twisted, rather than straight.
Most accounts describing these unique blooms are not effusive, but rather pejorative. Accordingly, and in the words of Juliet Blankespoor of the Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine:
Some callous individuals lacking floral social skills have been known to describe the blooms as scraggly.
I marvel at the timing of this last woody plant to bloom during the fall; this usually occurs shortly after its leaves turn yellow and have fallen to the ground.
After the flowers have withered away, some of them are replaced by seed capsules that require an entire year to mature. It is not uncommon to find last years seed pods still unopened next to the following year’s blossoms. A mature seed capsule is brown and about 2/3″ long; the upper third of this capsule is divided into 4 segments. Inside, each seed capsule has 2 cells; each cell contains a single seed. The seeds are up to ¼” long with an elliptical shape, shiny, and black. Common Witch-hazel has an interesting seed dispersal mechanism, popping audibly and shooting the dark seeds up to 30′ feet away. This has led to such additional common names as Snapping Alder or Snapping Hazel.
Henry D. Thoreau wrote about this unique mechanism in his Journal of Sept 21, 1859 entitled, “The Dispersion of Seeds”:
“One September I gathered some of the peculiarly formed nuts of the witch hazel, which grow in pretty clusters, clothed, as it were, in close-fitting buckskin, amid the yellowing leaves, and laid them in my chamber. The double-fruited stone splits and reveals the two shining black, oblong seeds. Three nights afterward, I heard in the night a snapping sound and the fall of some small body on the floor from time to time. In the morning I found it was produced by the witch hazel nuts on my desk springing open and casting their hard and stony seeds across the chamber. They were thus shooting their shining black seeds about the room for several days. Apparently it is not when they first gape open that the seeds fly out, for I saw many if not most of them open already with seed in them; but the seed appears to fit close to the shell at its base, even after the shell gapes above, and when I release one with my knife, it being still held by its base, it flies, as I have said. Its slippery base appears to be compressed by the unyielding shell, which at length expels it, just as you can make one fly by pressing it and letting it slip from between your thumb and finger.”
After a similar encounter with it, William Hamilton Gibson said of witch-hazel:
“I had been attracted by a bush which showed an unusual profusion of bloom and while standing close beside it in admiration I was suddenly stung on the cheek by some missile and the next instant shot in the eye by another, the mysterious marksman having apparently let go both barrels of his little gun directly in my face. I soon discovered him, an army of them,–in fact a saucy legion, all grinning with open mouths and white teeth exposed and their double-barreled guns loaded to the muzzle ready to shoot whenever the whim should take them”. – The Nature Study Review. Nov. 1919.
Beginning just prior to its flowers blooming, Common Witch-hazel displays a brilliant gold fall color.
Fall color of Common Witch-hazel
Folklore:
A myth of witchcraft held that a forked branch of witch-hazel could be used to locate underground water.
Culinary and Medicinal Uses:
American Indians used witch-hazel leaves for tea. Witch-hazel produces a capsule-like fruit enshrining two shiny hard black seeds with white, oily, edible interiors. The seeds are edible and have a flavor said to be similar to that of pistachio nuts.
Both bark and leaves of Common Witch-hazel contain tannic acid in large quantities, but the greater percentage is in the bark. That principal ingredient is why it has had wide medicinal use as an astringent.
The Potawatomi placed twigs on the hot rocks in a sweat lodge to bathe and soothe sore muscles with the steam. The Menomini boiled the twigs in water, then rubbed the decoction on their legs to keep them limber, or to treat a lame back. Among the Iroquois, witch-hazel had many uses including a strong tea for dysentery, to treat colds and cough, as an astringent and also as a blood purifier. The Mohegans used a decoction of the leaves and twigs to treat cuts, bruises, and insect bites.
The aromatic extract of leaves, twigs, and bark is used in mildly astringent lotions. Witch-hazel oil has been used in salves for soothing insect bites, burns and also rashes caused by Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans).
Its primary use has been as an infusion utilizing the inner bark. This infusion was used to treat internal illnesses such as colds, fevers, tuberculosis, sore throats, pneumonia, asthma, kidney problems, and arthritis, as well as external ailments such as bug bites, hemorrhoids, bruises, cuts, and scratches. Brewed strongly and taken in large quantities, the infusion also served as an emetic to induce vomiting. It was also commonly used as an astringent face wash for skin health, as it tightens pores and reduces redness – a common use for the plant even today.
In the mid-1840’s, Theron Pond of Utica, NY was supposedly shown witch-hazel’s uses and a means of creating an extract by an Oneida medicine man. He saw the practical applications of this product and entered into an agreement with the Oneida tribe to make the extract. He developed it into a skin product called “Golden Treasure” and successfully marketed it. After he died, it became known as Pond’s Extract.
The witch-hazel industry is centered in Connecticut with the E. E. Dickinson Co., the T. N. Dickinson Co., and the American Distilling and Manufacturing Co., producing most of the witch-hazel extract sold on the American market. Much of the harvest still comes from the woods of northwestern Connecticut, where landowners contract directly with the manufacturers. Harvest begins in the autumn. Branches are cut to the ground, but resprout, producing a new harvest in a few years. Portable chippers allow for on-site processing. It is then taken to the factories for distillation in stainless-steel vats. The witch-hazel is steam distilled for thirty-six hours, then re-heated, condensed and filtered. Alcohol (~14%) is added as a preservative. This is the witch-hazel “water” that reaches most pharmacies in America.
Although most herbs are sold in the United States as dietary supplements, witch-hazel is one of very few American medicinal plants still approved as an ingredient in non-prescription drugs by the Food and Drug Administration.
For recipes of several herbal remedies featuring Common Witch-hazel, read more here.
Wildlife Value:
The nectar and pollen of the flowers attract primarily flies and wasps, including biting midges (Forcipomyia spp.), non-biting midges (Cricotopus spp.), march flies (Bibio spp.), scuttle flies (Phoridae), flower flies (Syrphidae), Tachinid flies, flesh flies (Sarcophaga spp.), blow flies (Calliphoridae), Muscid flies, root-maggot flies (Anthomyiidae), grass flies (Chloropidae), dung flies (Scathophaga spp.), Braconid wasps, gall wasps (Cynipidae), Perilampid wasps, Pteromalid wasps, and Ichneumonid wasps. Other occasional visitors of the flowers include Halictid bees, Noctuid moths, flower bugs (Anthocoridae), and miscellaneous beetles.
Witch-hazel serves as a host plant for the larvae of the Spring Azure butterfly (Celastrina ladon) and the Witch-hazel Dagger moth (Acronicta hamamelis).
The seeds are eaten by Ruffed Grouse (Bonasa umbellus) and Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), while White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and Beaver (Castor canadensis) browse on the foliage and twigs and Eastern Cottontail Rabbits (Sylvilagus floridanus) browse on seedlings. Witch-hazel provides cover and nesting habitat for the Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea).
The fruit of Common Witch-hazel is eaten by Ruffed Grouse and White-tailed Deer. The fruit is also frequently eaten by Beaver and Eastern Cottontail Rabbit. Common Witch-hazel fruit is a minor fall food for American Black Bear (Ursus americanus) in western Massachusetts.
Where Found Locally:
This is the last article for 2020. This series will return in early spring; look for it again in March 2021.
Happy trails!
Curious By Nature 