Meetings with plants in winter: witch-hazel
Bramble & Briar #91
Just like the beauty berry, witch-hazel falls into that category of plants that receive forgiveness for being one-trick ponies by virtue of their solitary trick being stonkingly good. And again similarly to the callicarpa, it’s able to protest its reputation as plant of interest for one season only by indicating the rich autumn colour of its foliage. But no one plants witch-hazel for its leaves. With witch-hazel, it’s all about the flowers.
We are once again in the realm of flowering winter shrubs, the deciduous kind that take pains to get rid of distracting foliage at the end of autumn, the better to let the blossom shine. And the blossom of witch-hazel is a curious and wonderful thing, quietly flamboyant, each bloom no more than two or three centimetres at the most, and most of that space occupied by the air between each one of the four outrageously long, strap-like petals. The flowers huddle together in clusters, the long petals giving rise to an oft-repeated comparison with spiders, though the kind of disco arachnid that inhabits the dreams of anyone who’d employ such a metaphor doesn’t bear thinking about. Because another thing about witch-hazel is that, though the flowers are small, they’re vividly bright, in fiery shades of red, or orange, or a yellow so bright you’d think someone had been scrawling over bits of your garden with a highlighter pen. So, boogie spider or, if you were to ask me, lemon zest (or orange zest, if you’ve got an orange-flowered variety – can’t think of a citrus fruit with a red peel, but you get the picture), which to my mind is a far more evocative, not to say accurate, description, made more appropriate by the sweet, citrus tang of the scent on the whiffier specimens.
There’s an absolute corker of a witch-hazel, Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Jelena’, with copper orange flowers that look as though someone’s splatted spoonfuls of the best bits of a jar of thin-cut shredded marmalade over a bunch of twigs, but you’ve got to get your schnoz right in there to get the scent. I still think it’s worth growing, as it’s a beauty.
My own plant is a tiddler. Left in a pot for too long after it was kindly gifted to me but now, thankfully, planted in the actual ground where, come spring, I fully expect its roots to start making explorations, allowing it to establish and grow into a more impressive shrub. Not that witch-hazels ever grow particuarly big – 3 metres tops, though that’s big enough for most of our gardens, isn’t it? And it’ll take a good while to get to anything like that size. Its progress probably hasn’t been greatly assisted by my temporarily hoiking it back out of the soil yesterday to avoid trampling it or clumsily snapping bits off as we wrestled with a nearby cobnut that was shading the neighbour’s greenhouse.
With bright yellow flowers, Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Pallida’ is reputed to be one of the strongest scented varieties, and I’m looking forward to the full olfactory assault, particularly since here it seems to come into flower just as the blooms on the sarcococca begin to lose their potency. There’s another connection with the Christmas box – other than scented blooms that are visually not dissimilar, if structurally different (the long wispy bits on the sarcococca being stamens, rather than petals) – both hold last year’s fruit together with this year’s flowers, a feature which gives the genus of witch-hazel its botanical name – Hamamelis, from the Greek for ‘together with fruit’.
Words to live by, really. Together with fruit. Crumbles, summer puddings, cranberries lobbed into anything from flapjacks to pilafs, outfits with emergency satsumas stuffed into pockets, your daily apple (or three). It’s just a very sensible idea, that makes life that much more celebratory and delicious. And any plant that represents such a notion deserves a place in your garden, don’t you think? You won’t find a description like that in your plant catalogue, but then, that’s not why we’re here. Wishing you a fruit-filled day.
Lovely piece thankyou
Always wanted to plant one but nights like tonight with wind chills to -35 or more I don’t think they would be happy plants in my garden. Dark Minnesota, USA weather!