While reading Ngoc Minh Ngo’s book “New York Green” last fall I learned that Madison Square Park in Manhattan has an extensive collection of witch hazels. The flowers of witch hazels provide a sneak preview of the coming spring while still in the grip of winter. Spidery, crinkled petals are clustered along branches in hues of yellows, oranges, or reds, often delicately scented with spicy and sweet tones. Every January I cut some branches, bring them inside, and encourage them to bloom.
At the end of February the weather forecast promised sun and mild temperatures, so I drove down to the train station, boarded the commuter rail to Grand Central Station in New York, and walked downtown to Madison Square Park. The six acre city oasis is home to a signature plant collection of four wild species of witch hazel and seventy cultivars. Hamamelis virginiana is our native eastern North American plant, a fall-bloomer with yellow flowers that is the source of medicinal witch hazel. H.vernalis, found in the Ozarks, blooms in late winter with color variation from yellows to reds. H.japonica grows in the mountains of Japan and H.mollis in the high terrain of southern China, both blooming in late winter.
There are beautiful cultivars of all four species, but the real jewels of witch hazel world are the hybrids created by crossing the Japanese and Chinese Hamamelis, known as Hamamelis x intermedia. Hybrids occurred spontaneously in different sites when the parent species were grown together. In 1963, at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum, a strong cultivar was the first to be named: ‘Arnold’s Promise’. Grafted onto root stock of H.virginiana to increase hardiness, it produces sweetly scented, lemon yellow blooms in late winter and coppery foliage in the fall. It was only the start. Cultivars of gorgeous shades of yellow, orange, and red have been introduced since then
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As I walked around the park I marveled at the delicious colors in the slender filaments clustered along the stems; lemon, copper, plum, ruby, burnt orange, burgundy and gold. Blooms were set off dramatically against the urban hardscape, fragile crinkled jewelry backed by steel, stone, and glass. Each plant had a metal identification tag hanging from a branch but the shrubs were fenced in and the tags too far to read. Names such as ‘Orange Peel’, ‘Ruby Glow’, ‘Allgold’, ‘Copper Cascade’, or ‘Gingerbread’ were there but not for my eyes. Instead, I walked and savored the beauty.
‘Jelena’ is a favorite burnt orange cultivar that I grow. In his book simply titled “Witch Hazels”, Chris Lane wrote, “It is such a warm coppery orange colour that, on cold days, you feel you could warm your hands against its flowers.” The weather was chillier than I expected in New York and my hands were cold. Unfortunately the flowers of ‘Jelena’ didn’t work their magic. Instead, I crossed Broadway to Eataly, the Italian food emporium for a cappuccino. That did the trick
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just perfect! almost like i was there♥️
Lovely description!