A Favorite Thing: Witch Hazels

It’s that time of the year, dear friends – the time when flowers are everywhere…in catalogues. But we can still plan for floral pleasure in the darkest days of the year. Martha Marsh sent me an email on Christmas; honeybees are mobbing her Helleborus niger, the Christmas rose. In my garden, being hit by ice pellets as I write, three of my Hamamelis are in full and fragrant bloom.

The genus Hamamelis is the witch hazels. Some are native overseas, but two particular species are native to the United States and fit well into our northeast Ohio landscapes. These are H. virginiana, the common witch hazel, which despite the species name is actually native to eastern North America from Quebec to Texas (although spotty that far south); and Hamamelis vernalis, the Ozark witch hazel, whose species name implies that it blooms in spring. Yeah, maybe sometimes, but I call that late winter.

Typical witch hazel blossoms are yellow, although many newer cultivars range from palest yellow through orange to rusty red. The blossoms all have the fresh, clean scent of witch hazel, not surprisingly. Each bloom is a spidery cluster of four or five crinkled petals held in a leaf axil directly on a twig of the shrub – and yes, the plants are all shrubs, although they can get fairly large (to 12’ or even 15’ tall) in a habitat that agrees with them. Those habitats, at our latitude, tend to be sunny spots at the edge of the woods, with moist soils, and the preferred soils are acid clay, just like ours here.

H. virginiana tends to break into bloom at the same time its leaves turn butter yellow in fall, which means the bloom at first is not very showy. But as fall goes on and the leaves drop, witch hazel twinkles throughout the understory on damp grey days well into December.

Recent cultivars have been bred and selected for longer and later bloom periods. This past year I purchased, from the Holden Forests and Gardens Plant Sale, a cultivar of H. virginiana called ‘Ice Queen’. She was introduced into the trade very recently by Tim Brotzman of Brotzman Nurseries in Lake County, the most prominent witch hazel breeder in the United States. Some of our members will recall a lecture he gave for us about ten years ago. ‘Ice Queen’s’ bloom is a pure lemon yellow, and she is very showy right now (December 29).

Brotzman’s is also the source for another charming witch hazel I have blooming right now, a naturally occurring cross between our two native species called Hamamelis x ‘Winter Champagne’ that Tim found in Tennessee. She is only now coming into bloom; her color is more golden, with a tinge of orange at the base. She is known for a very strong fragrance, and for feeding our native pollinators in January when little else is available.

I only have one other witch hazel in my garden, and she is (sigh) not a native here. She is a beauty, my “entry drug” into the species, Hamamelis mollis ‘Pallida’, a Chinese shrub. Some experts believe she is actually a cross of H. mollis with our native H. vernalis, so you may find her sold as H. x intermedia ‘Pallida’ I include here a photo of her in bloom on March 2nd, 2023, as well as her winter form as she appeared then.

You can see in the final photo the form that is typical of this genus – horizontally branching, open and stretching. Some cultivars are more tightly clustered and a bit more upright, but the typical look of a witch hazel is one of generosity. She is stretching out to welcome hungry pollinators to feast on her abundant winter flowers, and to invite humans seeking spring sunshine to imagine what will come soon. She’s a kindly plant. You have to love her.