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Hamamelis virginiana |
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| | So far, the flower display is hardly breathtaking |
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| | By January, only the bracts remain, but they still add some interest |
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| | Late October flowers |
| Common name |
witchhazel |
| Family |
hamamelidaceae |
| Life cycle |
tree/shrub |
| Flowers |
yellow (late fall) |
| Light |
sun-part shade |
| Cultural notes |
ordinary garden soil (not too dry) |
Witchhazels are known for their fall or winter spidery flowers. Our native common witchhazel blooms in mid to late fall, starting at about the time its leaves drop. It prefers a moist soil, which means that its place in our garden is less than ideal: since we want to see the flowers up close in the off-season, it's planted along our front walk, which gets full sun (along with some baking from reflected sun) and little supplemental water. To help its roots, we planted it between two pyramidal yews, which keep the soil reasonably cool. In the end, our specimen survived without complaining, but probably never thrived. It always looked a bit awkward, and finally succumbed to a saw one spring day as part of a sprucing-up-the-front-yard project.
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This plant used to grow in our garden, but it slipped away... About my plant portraits
PlantLinks to other web pages about Hamamelis virginiana
Visitors to this page have left the following comments| M Garr | Sep 27, 2005 | Isn't this an under story tree. Mine is almost in full shade except for high noon. It gets clear yellow leaves and is very happy. Sorry, I should have told you first that I love your web pages. They are GREAT!
Thanks for your comments. I do believe it can take quite a bit of shade, as your experience suggests. In fact, full sun is probably too much sun. |
| Charlie B. | Nov 30, 2009 | I know from seeing these growing in a local forest that they grow very well as a complete understory tree, but mine is growing in full sun and it is doing very well. I need to continuously prune it to keep it from getting too large, and it is already much larger than the well established trees in the woods. I've been growing it here for over ten years and it always gives decent blooms and usually many seeds. |
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