Hamamelis intermedia Seeds | Witch Hazel
LATIN NAME: Hamamelis intermedia
COMMON NAME: Witch Hazel
Plant Profile
Each flower has four petals and a four-lobed calyx, and the petals are narrow, crimped and curled when they first emerge. They unfurl and straighten as the air warms, which is why the same shrub can look crumpled in a cold snap and spread flat a few hours later. The flowers are borne in tight clusters on the previous season’s wood and open before the leaves.
The first hybrids were raised at the Arnold Arboretum from seed of a Chinese witch hazel, collected in China by the plant hunter Ernest Henry Wilson, with a Japanese witch hazel in flower nearby to supply the pollen. The seedlings proved to be neither parent, and the taxonomist Alfred Rehder published the hybrid name Hamamelis × intermedia for the group. European gardens made their own crosses in the same years.
Because the parents cross freely, the hybrid has produced a long list of named forms. Pallida is pale yellow, large-flowered and very sweetly scented, and it is probably a backcross to its Chinese parent. Arnold Promise is a late-flowering light yellow with a vase-shaped frame and rich scent, and darker forms such as Diane and Jelena push into copper, orange and red on faintly scented flowers.
Hybrid vigour is the practical reason the garden witch hazels have displaced the species: the hybrid makes a bigger, faster shrub than either parent, holds its flowers over a longer stretch of winter, and shows a better autumn colour into the bargain. It stands cold, tolerates clay if the drainage is decent, and needs only a position in sun or half shade with room for its spreading frame.
Science & Biotechnology
The genus is rich in gallotannins, with hamamelitannin as the best known of them, together with proanthocyanidins and free gallic acid in the leaf. These are the astringent molecules that made witch hazel a household remedy, and the hybrids carry them in their own leaves. The distilled extract of the American species is a separate subject from the garden hybrids grown for their flowers.
Uses & Benefits
Two east Asian species meet in this plant. Chinese witch hazel supplies broad, blunt petals in soft yellow and a strong sweet perfume; the Japanese species supplies narrower, spidery petals, red and orange flower forms, and a habit of sounding its colour early. The hybrid between them takes the middle ground, and its name means exactly that: intermediate.
The perfume follows the Chinese parent. Where a selection sits close to Chinese witch hazel it is generously scented, and where the Japanese influence is strong the flowers are more likely to be broader in colour than in fragrance, with red forms at the far end of that scale barely scenting the air at all. Choose by scent, not by the catalogue photograph, and buy the plant in flower.
Growing from Seed
Fertilised flowers make a small woody capsule with two beaks, which ripens through the following season and then splits with enough force to fling the two shiny black seeds a short distance from the bush. Sprouting them takes patience: the seed needs a long damp period before it will break, and seedlings are slow to reach flowering size, so named forms are raised from cuttings or grafts instead.
Collect the seed as the capsules split and sow it at once into a deep pan of two parts leaf mould, one part peat and one part coarse grit, covering it to twice its own depth. Leave the pan outdoors in the weather, keep it damp, and expect the seedlings to arrive in their own time. Move them on at the second or third true leaf, and grow them on in light shade.
Witch hazel needs almost no pruning, but the little it needs must be done at the right moment. Thin and shape the shrub immediately after flowering, while the wood is still bare, and remove any grafted suckers from below the union. A plant cut in summer will lose the flower buds that were already formed for the coming winter, and no flowering shrub forgives that twice.
Our Take
My own plant is a Pallida that opens in the worst of the winter, and I would not be without it. If you want the parents rather than the hybrid, the perfumed Chinese witch hazel is the one to look for, while the American witch hazel is the species behind the distilled astringent. For another bare-wood winter flower, winter jasmine does the same job with a smaller footprint.
Related Reading
Gardeners who grow Witch Hazel often pair it with these related subjects: