Week 10: Witch Hazel, Friedrich Nietzsche, William Hamilton Gibson

To any stray readers of this intermittent project, which I am now calling by a new name:

Welcome to Lectio Terra, a weekly series of curated readings drawn from botany, philosophy, and related disciplines. We are roughly 10 weeks past the winter solstice and closing in on the vernal equinox. Join me in this solar cycle for some eccentric, esoteric, ephemeral fun.

Headnote#

When witch hazel blooms in late fall or early winter, it surprises our sense of time and place. I haven’t witnessed its dried seed pods exploding, as Gibson describes humorously later in his reflection. But I remember once, perhaps my first encounter with the plant, finding yellow ribbons of witch hazel unfurled under piles of snow and thin globes of ice. The plant’s strange time-keeping can remind us to look again at dormant life and feel something different in the cold air. The title of Nietzsche’s essay collection, “untimely meditations,” has been translated as “thoughts out of season.” In that spirit, may witch hazel be an “encouragement,” as Nietzsche writes, “to live after our own rule and measure.”

Vernal witch hazel (Hamamelis vernalis) is native to the Ozarks rather than New England, but it is noteworthy for its bright and sometimes fragrant late winter blooms, in February through early March, alongside Chinese, Japanese, and hybrid varieties—such as the “Arnold Promise” cultivar created, accidentally, by Boston’s own Arnold Arboretum . Common witch hazel (Hamemelis virginiana), which is native to New England, blooms in late autumn. The witch hazel genus (Hamamelis) is related to the winter hazel genus (Corylopsis), native to Asia, and to other genera within the controversial Hamamelidaceae family.

Figure 1. From J. Francis Macbride. Autumn Flowers and Fruits (Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1924). 103.

Readings#

1. October 20th - One by one the lingering wild flowers have succumbed to the frosts; a few of the hardy asters being the only reminders of the regal glory of the October copses. But though the blighting breath of the approaching winter is fast quenching even these remnants of bloom, there is one fresh blossom which shall abide to welcome “chill November,” even as the dandelion welcomed May, and as the rose and the golden-rod welcomed June and September. The waving pennants of the witch-hazel, coiled for weeks within their patient buds, are now swung out from thousands of gray twigs in the copses, and the underwoods are lit up with the yellow halo from their myriads of fringy petals.

“The Witch Hazel Bombardment,” from William Hamilton Gibson, Sharp Eyes: A Rambler’s Calendar (1892; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1904). 230.

2. But even if the future leave us nothing to hope for, the wonderful fact of our existing at this present moment of time gives us the greatest encouragement to live after our own rule and measure; so inexplicable is it, that we should be living just to-day, though there have been an infinity of time wherein we might have arisen; that we own nothing but a span’s length of it, this “to-day,” and must show in it wherefore and whereunto we have arisen. We have to answer for our existence to ourselves; and will therefore be our own true pilots, and not admit that our being resembles a blind fortuity. […] The true educators and moulders reveal to thee the real groundwork and import of thy being, something that in itself cannot be moulded or educated, but is anyhow difficult of approach, bound and crippled: thy educators can be nothing but thy deliverers. And that is the secret of all culture: it does not give artificial limbs, wax noses, or spectacles for the eyes—a thing that could buy such gifts is but the base coin of education. But it is rather a liberation, a removal of all the weeds and rubbish and vermin that attack the delicate shoots, the streaming forth of light and warmth, the tender dropping of the night rain; it is the following and the adoring of Nature when she is pitifully-minded as a mother;—her completion, when it bends before her fierce and ruthless blasts and turns them to good, and draws a veil over all expression of her tragic unreason—for she is a step-mother too, sometimes.

Friedrich Nietzsche. “Schopenhauer as Educator.” Untimely Meditations (1873-1876). 105-106, 107-108.

Supplementum#

• Cornel West, “Nietzsche’s Prefiguration of Postmodern American Philosophy,” boundary 2 9.3 (1981), pp. 241-269.

• Hamamelis virginiana, from John D. Gill and William M. Healy (eds.), Shrubs and Vines for Northeastern Wildlife (1974), pp. 154-157.

• “Which Witchhazel” (Feb. 8, 2018), from the University of New Hampshire Extension.

• “Arnold Promise” Witch Hazel, from Arnold Arboretum.

• “Witch-Hazel, Hamamelis spp.,” from Arnold Arboretum.

Figure 2. Leaves of the Witch Hazel Family - 1/3 life size, from Richard E. Weaver, “The Witch Hazel Family (Hamamelidaceae),” Arnoldia 36.3 (1976, pp. 69-109.