Hazel
Corylus avellana
Wisdom lives at the bottom of the pool where the hazelnuts fall.
Overview
Hazel is the tree of wisdom in the British and Irish tradition, and the mechanism by which wisdom is transmitted is precise and peculiar: nine hazel trees grow above the Well of Wisdom at the source of all rivers, and their nuts fall into the water and are eaten by a salmon, which absorbs the knowledge contained in each nut. Whoever catches that salmon and eats it — or presses a thumb to its cooking skin and licks the burn — gains all wisdom instantly. The story is ancient enough that no original version survives; what survives is the consistent detail: it is always hazelnuts, always a salmon, always a burn on the thumb. Hazel was the tree whose forked branches were used for water-divining, for pointing at the invisible and finding it true.
Botanical Notes
A multi-stemmed, deciduous shrub or small tree reaching 3–6 metres when allowed to grow freely, commonly coppiced to ground level and resprouting in dense, straight poles. Leaves are rounded with a pointed tip and doubly toothed. Male flowers are the familiar pale yellow lamb's tail catkins of late winter; tiny, red female flowers appear on the same stem in February to March. Nuts are round to ovoid, enclosed in a ragged green bract, ripening in September to October. Common in hedgerows, mixed woodland, and woodland edge throughout Europe; one of the primary understorey trees of ancient mixed woodland. Nuts are high in oils and protein; hazel was a major food source for hunter-gatherer populations in Britain.
Lore & History
Hazel rods were the traditional material for water-divining — the forked branch pulled down toward hidden water or metal. This practice, recorded in sixteenth-century texts, persists in some form to the present day; controlled experiments have not supported a mechanism beyond the ideomotor effect, but the tradition predates any expectation of a mechanism. In Irish mythology, the hazel is the tree of Fionn mac Cumhaill — it was salmon flesh that gave him his wisdom, and hazelnuts that gave the salmon theirs. In the besom-broom tradition, hazel provides the binding withs — the twisted osiers or hazel strips that hold the birch together. Hazel nuts harvested at Samhain were used in divination: nuts named for two parties were placed in the fire, and the way they burned — together or apart — told the future of the relationship.
Warnings
Safe. Hazel nuts are a common allergen — hazel pollen is a primary cause of hay fever, and those with hazel pollen allergy often experience oral allergy syndrome with raw hazelnuts (tingling, swelling in the mouth). Cooking the nuts destroys the cross-reactive proteins. Otherwise among the most benign plants in the archive.