Field Notes—

Witch Hazel In Cupid’s Quiver

By Curtiss Clark

Monday morning, on my way from the house to the car, I surveyed the meager archipelago of ice and snow, literally giving ground to the late February sun. Exactly a week before, all of Connecticut was under two feet of snow, and this same trip to the car had been a trial. The trip in the car… well, forget about it.

The nor’easter of February 12 looked like a knockout punch to the delicate tips of daffodils, the tumescent magnolia buds, and spring’s various other emissaries emboldened by January’s extended thaw. But this week, the last of the snow is timidly hiding in the shadows behind the barns and beneath the shrubbery. Winter is beginning to look a little weak.

We are now getting about the same amount of sunlight that we had on those sparkling October days when leaves, and not snowdrifts, were piling up in the yard. Everything is leaning toward spring. Whatever snowstorms this winter has left in it will be quickly sacrificed to a lost cause, and the natural world knows it.

For a couple of weeks now, birds have been cautiously softening and extending their sharp winter calls. They send up occasional full-throated spring songs from the privet hedge like trial balloons.

Hoover, the chipmunk, has emerged from his stonewall lair to vacuum up still more sunflower seeds for his hidden larder.

And the most promising sign of all was Kate, my wife and perennial Valentine, consulting a landscape expert about plans for a dooryard garden skirting the house to the south and east.

If you have ever wondered how such a hot-blooded holiday as Valentine’s Day wound up in the middle of February, it is useful to consider Kate. Cupid is to St Sebastian what the gardening is to Kate. She is badly smitten each year on or about the fourteenth of February with a desire to plan the summer’s gardening projects. So this year on a Valentine’s Day covered over in snow, I tried to address her passions where they lay; I presented her with a card, chocolate hearts, and a witch hazel plant.

Witch hazel is named for the similarity of its oval leaves to hazelnut leaves. The “witch” in the name is not derived from Halloween, but from “wych,” the old English word that describes a Y-shaped stick with flexible, forking branches. Water witches are what dowsers use to locate water supplies underground, and witch hazel, which thrives in watery ground, is said to be most useful in this pursuit.

The beavers, who are waiting out winter in their pond lodge just down the road from us, also find the plant useful, but not for finding water. They have engineered their world so plenty of water finds them. In studying the beavers at the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts, researchers have found that the percentage of witch hazel in the beavers’ food cache far exceeds its natural distribution in the surrounding woodlands. They theorize that the beavers are deriving some benefit from the natural oils in the leaves and bark of the plant.

The benefits of witch hazel are well known to humans. For centuries its volatile oils have been used as a powerful astringent for stanching the flow of blood from nicks and cuts and as a tonic for soothing itches.

The plant is also known as “winterbloom” because its flowers, typically yellow, can be seen heralding spring in the snows of January and February. It turns out to be the perfect gift to soothe a woman walking around in the middle of winter with blossoms in her head and an itch to plant something. Tom Johnson sells witch hazel at Lexington Gardens, so I purchased a purple variety as a close substitute for Valentine red.

The gift, I’m happy to say, was a hit and positioned me squarely in Cupid’s crosshairs for a return volley, which I faced bravely and confidently, knowing that we had some witch hazel on hand.