“Now let us sit beneath the grateful shade
Which Hazels interlaced with elms have made.”
_Virgil_, Eclogue V.
The Hazel, under which Menalcas invites his brother-shepherd to sit, is
a tree of considerable size, while the American hazels are mere shrubs,
seldom overtopping a rustic stone-wall. The Hazel among the Romans, like
the olive among the Jews, was regarded as the emblem of peace; and this
estimation of it was transmitted to the people of a later period. Hence,
in popular works of fancy on the language of flowers, this is recorded
as its symbolic meaning; and in ancient times a Hazel rod was supposed
to have power of reconciling friends who had been separated by
disagreement. These superstitions connected with the Hazel, and more
particularly the one relating to the Hazel rod, named the Caduceus,
assigned by the gods to Mercury as a means of restoring harmony to the
human race, probably gave origin to the divining-rod, which was first
made of Hazel and afterwards of the witch-elm. It is remarkable that in
America this use was made of the hamamelis, a very different plant in
its botanical characters, and hence called the Witch-Hazel.
There are two New England species, both delighting in the shelter of
rude fences, and producing their flowers before their leaves. They are
distinguished chiefly by the shape of their fruit. The common Hazel is
the one most generally known. In this the shells or husks that enclose
the nuts are of the same round shape, growing in a cluster, and each
invested with a calyx like that of an ordinary flower. The Beaked Hazel
is a smaller bush and frequents more solitary places than the other.
“The calyx enclosing the nut, densely hispid and round at base, is
contracted like a bottle into a long narrow neck, which is cut and
toothed at the extremity.” The whole nut with its envelope resembles a
bird’s head and beak. A dry sandy loam is the soil generally occupied by
the Hazel. Along the old roads that pass over dry sandy plains, that
border many of the river-banks in the Northern States, the Hazel,
growing in frequent clumps, forms in some of these locations the most
common kind of shrubbery. When we see a pitch-pine wood on one side of a
road, the cultivated land on the opposite side is usually bordered with
a growth of Hazels.
Both species are particularly worthy of protection and preservation.
They produce a valuable nut without our care; they are ornamental to our
fields and by-roads; they feed the squirrels and shelter the birds, and
they add a lively interest to natural objects by their spontaneous
products. The Hazel is associated with many pleasant adventures in our
early days, with nut-gatherings and squirrel-hunts, and with many
pleasant incidents in classical poetry. The Hazel has been a favorite
theme of poets, especially those of the Middle Ages. In the songs of
that period are constant allusions to the Hazel-bush, probably from its
frequency in natural hedge-rows, and its valuable fruit.