Witch-Hazel.

10-21-10 SHORT HILLS: I just noticed that witch-hazel is in bloom. The flowers are tiny and delicate and don’t exactly draw you in from fifty feet away like a magnolia or peony. They are pleasantly scented if you get close enough. Who do you suppose pollinates these flowers? When it is still in leaf, it’s easier to see the flowers from underneath the leaves. Some witch-hazels flower only after the leaves have fallen. Some are reddish and come out in very early spring. When the leaves turn, they have the same color, yellow, as the flowers. These shrubs are not the source of hazel nuts, but do make a fruit with four seeds. The shrubs can get ten to twenty feet tall and tolerate full shade.

That dead leaf is from the tree that keeps the witch-hazel in shade most of the growing season.


From underneath the leaves, the flowers have four bracts, four ribbon-like petals and four stamen around a central pistil.

You can see an opening flower bud here.