Bewitched by Witch Hazel

Witch hazel in flower, with company

One of the joys of being retired is not having a fixed schedule; no one demands you show up at an office or factory at 8:30 and stay until dusk. If you’re both retired and appreciate the freedom it brings, you make a point of saying ‘yes’ to serendipitous invitations. Which is what I did on Tuesday when an email arrived asking if I would have an interest in looking at witch hazels in flower.

Last year, my garden was visited by a charming, British expatriate couple, Chris and Colin McArdle, who brought their infant grandchild. We had tea and scones on my screened porch on a beautiful May morning. Seven months later, my hospitality was reciprocated when I was invited to welcome in the new year on Greenwich Mean Time at the McArdle’s lovely home in Brookline. I found it an entirely sensible way to celebrate: raise a glass at 7 p.m. while enjoying Marmite on toast and other British goodies worthy of a hamper from Fortnum & Mason’s. Oh, and be home, off the road, and safely in bed by 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Chris McArdle, with Hamamelis

Chris McArdle, in turn, has one of the best (albeit nonpaying) jobs in the world: she’s a docent at the Arnold Arboretum. For those not familiar with it, the Arnold Arboretum (hereinafter, ‘the Arboretum’ to make things easier) is a 281-acre public park, designed by Fredrick Law Olmsted, that sits squarely in the middle of Boston. It is America’s oldest arboretum, established in 1872 and, while a free public park nominally owned by the City of Boston, it is under the stewardship of Harvard University.

Certain plant snobs turn up their noses at the Arboretum because it is chock-full of trees and shrubs from other continents that have climate zones comparable to eastern Massachusetts (6b or 7a, depending on whom you ask). Those foreign plants, though, are the whole point of the Arboretum. Back in the nineteenth century, collecting rare plants in the verge of extinction and finding a safe place where they could be propagated was the life work of many botanists.

One of Arnold Arboretum's
dawn redwoods

Perhaps the most famous example is the Dawn Redwood, which was discovered as a fossil in Japan in 1941 and thought to be extinct – except, by stunning coincidence, that very same year a forester in China noted a tree that he had not seen before. In 1946 the connection was made between the fossil and the tree. The Arboretum sent money for seed collection. Seeds arrived at the Arboretum in 1948 and were shared widely. Today, Dawn Redwoods are found in multiple sites, including more than 200 at the Crescent Ridge Dawn Redwoods Preserve; a private, 50-acre site in the mountains of western North Carolina.

281 acres. Double-click for full screen

All of which is prelude to explaining how I came to be part of a small tour, conducted by Chris McArdle, to see the Arboretum's comprehensive collection of Hamamelis - better known as witch-hazel.

Witch hazel, blooming in the snow

Witch-hazel gets its name from a combination of its pliable branches (Old English wice, meaning "bendable") and its historical use as a ‘witching stick’ for dowsing. In 1588, an assistant to Sir Walter Raleigh exploring the lands along the east coast of America, (lands Raleigh named Virginia after the virgin queen) mistook the wood used for bows by indigenous people as that called witch-hazel at home.  In fact, it was a different plant, but it was the North American plant that Linnaeus included in his list of Genera as Hamamelis in 1742 and then named the only species of which he knew as virginiana in his list of species in 1756. There are three distinct North American species as well as species from Japan and China. Growers all over the Northern Hemisphere experiment with crosses of these species.

Ozark witch hazel (H. vernalis)
blooms with an orange flower

The most common witch hazel growing in the wild in this country is Hamamelis virginiana. There is also the Ozark witch hazel (H. vernalis), found in Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma; and a relatively recent find, H. ovalis, which was discovered in Mississippi in 2004. The Arboretum has mature specimens of everything described above.

The common element of all witch hazels is that they bloom when other trees and shrubs are biding their time.  The virginiana both blooms and bears fruit from last year’s flowers in the fall but the other witch-hazels bloom in the cold of winter from January to March.

Why take the chance of blooming in winter?  Because while there are fewer pollinators around, your nectar is the only game in town. On a warm afternoon, moths, gnats, wasps and flies will come out of dormancy and descend on witch hazel. And, the shrub is playing a long game: while the insects are spreading pollen, the fertilization doesn’t take place until spring, and the ‘fruit’ – a tiny, hard nut – forms equally slowly; maturing in the fall.

A witch hazel seed or nut

Which is where the Germans get it right giving witch-hazel the common name ‘Zaubernuss’ (magic nut); a great description for how witch hazel spreads its seed. All summer long, the shrub builds up what amounts to an explosive charge for each nut. When the time is right, those seeds go flying up to 40 feet from the parent plant – establishing the next generation. Multiple sources agree getting hit by one is a painful experience.

Chris again, and my thanks!

I knew none of this on Tuesday morning. But, over the course of a leisurely walk over ninety minutes and a visit to specimens of the Asian and North American varieties of Hamamelis spread out across the Arboretum, I came away both moderately knowledgeable and a budding fan of a wonderful plant that fills a special niche in the world of horticulture.

And, it was all made possible because Chris McArdle had absorbed that knowledge across roughly four decades of being a docent… plus the serendipity of her sending out an email asking if I would join her on the walk (which was open to the public), and my having the good sense to say ‘yes’ to her invitation.