New Hampshire is homogenous at mid-season. At its edges, on the cusp of shoulder seasons, that unity unravels into stark regional differences that confound tourists and meteorologists alike.
They’re still raking oak leaves on the Seacoast where a fine Indian Summer persists. The Lakes Region awaits its first real snowfall. A week ago, ski racks and Christmas trees adorned salt-encrusted cars returning from albeit temporarily snow-clad hills north of the Notches.
What season is it when late autumn stretches into December? Deer season? Shopping Season? I submit this must be “the season of the witch” – witch hazel – and here is why:
Rose-pink dawn reveals frost on the spider-legged, crinkly yellow petals of witch hazel flowers in November. With flowers that persist beyond snowfall, witch hazel is a better choice for our State Flower than the redolent purple lilacs of May. Is that blasphemy to State tourism officials? We need some December equivalent of Lilac and Lupine festivals to stimulate our economy in the pre-Christmas lull.
Here is why witch hazel is as worthy a candidate for State Flower as Ben Franklin’s submission of wild turkey rather than bald eagle as our national symbol. Mere beauty contests perhaps, but witch hazel is not image conscious. Witch hazel makes a quirky bow tie, suspenders and horn-rimmed glasses fashion statement.
Witch hazel is a free-thinker, a contrary-wise native shrub which thrives best in moist, semi-shade under a hardwood canopy. It does not tolerate direct sun like some sun-tanned California raisin tourist. One must venture beyond the garden and backyard, and wander deeper into the lovely late autumn forest to find the crooked, zigzag limbs of witch hazel growing in a dense secondary understory. Its Latin horticultural name “Hamamelis” means ‘together with fruit.’ Witch hazel nutlets, flowers and next year's leaf buds all appear simultaneously, a rarity among trees.
While other plants shed leaves and go dormant, Witch Hazel loses its oval, wavy, lopsided toothed leaves and then blossoms alongside the fruit of the previous year, like a Golden Age renaissance of some aging NH vaudeville star. The late flowers use showy petals and fragrance to attract tiny gnats and late bees who receive sugary nectar and sticky pollen rewards. Botanists theorize that unusually late flowering is a gamble to insure that insects pay special attention to the last flowers of the year. Nevertheless, fruit set success is extremely low. Less than one percent of flowers set fruit. After pollination, fertilization of seeds is delayed until spring. Fruits develop during the summer growing season and then new flowers appear in autumn. It’s sort of backwards.
With a nod to NH Franco-American culture, tan seed capsules each carry one or two small shiny black seeds reputed to be edible with an oily pistachio flavor. In Canada, French trappers called the shrub “Pistachier Noir,” the black pistachio. In fall, nut capsules burst open and eject seeds a as far as 25 feet away. Once open, the empty husks persist on the branches amid new flowers.
Witch Hazel has a history of divining things yet unseen. Just like the New Hampshire first-in-the-nation political primary. The origin of the name witch hazel may be derived from “wych,” an Anglo-Saxon word for “bend." Hazel comes from the resemblance of witch-hazel leaves to those of other hazels. The old English word “wicke” means lively. The shrub may have been dubbed a “wicke” hazel by the pilgrims because the dowsing end of a forked limb is "lively" as a divining rod, bending downward when a dowser or “water witch” uses witch hazel limbs to divine groundwater.
This stereotypical, cantankerous native has astringent celebrated qualities – traits that serve a medicinal purpose. Leaves and bark contain tannic and Gallic acids that reduce swelling; of political egos or otherwise. Native Americans used witch hazel to relieve pain, swelling, bruising and bleeding of external injuries. Many a touted presidential candidate has limped home from the NH Primary in need of witch hazel!
Native American use of witch hazel for medicinal purposes was adopted by the New England colonists. By the mid-1800s, bark and leaves harvested from witch hazel were distilled and sold as a treatment for skin irritations, boils, bruises, and other ailments.
Witch hazel was a Victorian-era toiletry manufactured for wide distribution in America as an astringent body-splash and after-shave. Commercial witch hazel tonics were staples in American medicine cabinets. T. N. Dickinson, a retired Baptist minister, with his two sons developed a witch hazel empire in Essex, Connecticut. Dickinson’s Witch-hazel is still sold throughout the world.
Now December brushpile bonfires stacked on my woodlot will soon kindle random thoughts like sparks which ascend to mix with the stars of familiar winter constellations, Orion, Leo and the Pleiades. When tiny geysers of boiling sap erupt from cut witch hazel stems in a bonfire, a treasury of childhood memories is unlocked in the rarely-visited wing in my personal museum of memories.
I remember grandma kept “Dickinson’s Witch Hazel” in her kitchen “Frigidaire” with its old-fashioned built-in ice box. Witch hazel reduced itching of mosquito bites, poison ivy, heat rash and sunburn. The power of a single molecule of a particular scent can rekindle a whole suite of vivid memories of long-dead relatives and nearly forgotten places or events.
Soon, holiday scents will pervade the air – mingled scents of balsam fir needles, bayberry candles, gingerbread and Christmas cookies baking. While Witch hazel isn’t exactly Frankincense or Myrrh, those ancient gifts of the Magi were derived from aromatic gum resins and the sap of particular trees. The Forests of New Hampshire bestow many gifts, not the least of which are the peculiar early winter blossoms of a plant that should rightfully be our State Flower!