In the bleak mid-winter…time to bloom? Witch hazel, Hamamelis, proffers its flowers to the snow. Such willful disregard for the seasons is a refreshing sight, suggesting that we, too, might sometimes deck ourselves in vernal finery, despite the weather. Expect little reward, though. So few pollinators visit that fewer than 1% of flowers form any seed. Why, then, such obdurate insistence by witch hazel on winter blooms? Perhaps to keep the few flying pollinators on warm winter days to itself and thus avoid cross-pollination with undesirable kin? Perhaps.

According to OED via Etymology Online, “witch” is “probably from Old English wice ‘Applied generally or vaguely to various trees having pliant branches'”. Bending the rules.