Handbook of Nature-Study · Lesson CCVII · Topic 31: Flowering shrubs and small trees
207. The witch-hazel
Goal: Your child can describe the witch-hazel's autumn flowers and watch its nuts shoot their seeds.
You'll need
- Witch-hazel twigs with closed brown nuts (fall)
- A box or tray with sides
- A hand lens (magnifying glass)
- A nature notebook and a pencil (colored pencils if you have them)
What's in the book
The lesson has a leading thought, a method for the youngest children (twigs brought in to pop their seeds) and for older ones (the flowers), and ten observations on the shrub, its leaves and galls, its flowers, and its nuts and seeds.
The lesson, step by step
When and where
October and November, when the yellow ribbon-like flowers open just as the leaves fall. Witch-hazel grows as a shrub or small tree at woods edges and along streams.
The leading thought
The witch-hazel blossoms during the autumn, and thus adds beauty to the landscape. It has an interesting mechanism by which it can shoot its seeds for a distance of many feet.
Bring the nuts in
Gather a few twigs with closed nuts and lay them in a box with sides. Leave them indoors where it is warm and dry. The book promises: "Soon the seeds will be popping." Keep faces back from the nuts; the seeds fly hard.
The shrub and its leaves
Is the witch-hazel a shrub or a tree?
Are the leaves regular in form, or larger on one side than the other?
Are there many queer-shaped little swellings on the leaf above and below? See how many of these you can find? Tell what you think they are.
The flowers
What is the shape and color of the petals, and how many of them are there in each blossom?
With a lens observe the way the two little doors to the anther fly open
The seed gun
Can you see that the shell, when partially open, ready to throw out the seeds resembles a queer little face?
How far have you known the witch-hazel to throw its seeds? Study the nut and try to discover how it throws the seeds so far.
Measure from the box to where the seeds landed.
Nature notebook
Draw a flower with its four ribbon petals, and a nut open like a little face with its two black seeds. Record the longest seed throw.
Answers to the book's problems
Each flower has four long, narrow, yellow petals. The swellings are galls made by tiny insects. As the woody nut dries, its walls squeeze the slippery seeds until they shoot out, like a wet seed pinched between your fingers; they can fly many feet.
Worked out for this site from the scan. If a number in your copy differs, trust the book.