Winter-flowering plants give pleasure out of all proportion to their size or numbers. One of the most spectacular is the golden-flowered witch-hazel, whose blooms are a burst of sunshine in grey Januaries. Later, the bright yellow leaves warm up fall. People looking for a slowgrowing tree with two seasons of beauty have a chance to see witch-hazels in bloom right now at their local nursery. Check out flower colour and fragrance while you can see and smell exactly what you would be getting.
Generally, it's the golden-flowered witch-hazels that are fragrant. This includes the deep yellow Arnold's Promise and the pale yellow Pallida. But not all witch-hazel flowers are golden. Some are orange (Jelena) while others are various shades of red (Diane or Ruby Glow). Where flowers are red or orange, fragrance is faint or missing and the fall foliage tends to be red, orange or a spectacular mix of both.
Witch-hazel is easy to grow, hardy to zone five and tolerant of many soils (though happiest in well-drained but moisture-retentive ones). The spidery flowers open in early to mid-January and scrunch up in bitter cold then open wide again when the temperature rises.
Most of the popular, easy-to-get witch-hazels are hybrids between the Japanese witch-hazel (Hamamelis japonica) and the small, fragrant Chinese witch-hazel (Hamamelis mollis). Besides being slow-growing, H. mollis is also slow to root during attempts at propagation.
That's why witch-hazel hybrids are usually grafted onto a faster-rooting, more vigorous species: Hamamelis virginiana. The hybrids are still slow-growing, but eventually reach about four metres. They're hardier than the species and easy to garden under because the branches are diagonally upright near ground level, branching and widening as they gain height.
Cutting witch-hazel branches for indoor vases can trigger sucker growth below the graft because the rootstock tries to replace the lost branches. It's best to pull suckers off when very young because older suckers need to be cut and will likely re-grow. These H. virginiana suckers produce small yellow flowers in fall, which are hidden by yellow leaves-nice, but not hugely ornamental. This is the medicinal witch-hazel used in herbal medicine for its astringent effect on blood vessels. Generally, witch-hazels need little pruning aside from the removal of dead, badly placed or diseased branches-and their response to pruning is unpredictable. Instead of shoots appearing where growth buds ought to be, they will instead produce branches from very inconvenient spots.
Witch-hazel seed usually needs two chilly winters outside to remove germination inhibitors. This was the timing when I grew them from seed. It took an additional eight years of growth before flowers appeared. I've heard they can be layered. Most shrubs can be, though with witch-hazels I suspect it would be a long process given their slow growth. U.S. breeders are working on improvements to a winter-flowering American witch-hazel species H. Vernalis, which reaches only two to 2.5 metres. Flowers of some of the results are said to range from reddish purple to purple. These include H. vernalis Amethyst said to have purple-red flowers with a spicy scent and scarlet foliage in fall.
