The hazel is a shrub and sometimes small tree of the genus Corylus, sub-family Corylaceae, family Betulaceae, found in Europe, North Africa, Asia, and North America.. The leaves are roundish-cordate, alternate and shortly petiolate. The bark is reddish-brown and smooth. The plant is monoecious, the male flowers are clustered in pendulous catkins, the female flowers are arranged in erect, short, bud-like spikes with protruding red styles. The fruit is a hard, brown, rounded nut (filbert), enclosed by an irregularly lobed green involucre.
The European hazel (Corylus Avellana) produces the nuts called filberts, and grows best in a tolerably dry soil. It bears male and female flowers, the former composing cylindrical catkins. The hazel-nut oil is little inferior in flavour to that of almonds. Hazel branches form excellent walking-sticks, fishing-rods, etc, and the wood produces good charcoal, often employed by painters.
The American hazel (Corylus. americana) very much resembles the European. The roots are used by cabinet-makers for veneering; and in Italy the chips were formerly sometimes put into turbid wine for the purpose of fining it.
The witch hazel or wych hazel, Hamamelis virginica, is a shrub or small tree of a different natural order, the Hamamelidaceae. It is a native of the United States, and healing properties have long been ascribed to it both by the Indians and the settlers. A liquid prepared from it is said to be useful as an application to wounds, stanching the bleeding and promoting healing, being applied also to bruises, sprains, bleeding piles, in internal bleeding, etc. There arc several officinal preparations of the witch-hazel, especially a fluid extract and a tincture. The former American patent medicine, Pond's Extract, owed its chief properties to the witch-hazel. Research Hazel
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Matt and Leela Probert
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Research Hazel
