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| American Witchhazel Hamamelis virginiana |
This is a cool plant! I never even heard of it until I hooked up with IN-PLANTS. The folks on there would chat about it every fall, looking for blooms. It turns out that this shrub is probably the latest blooming plant in Indiana. It doesn't even start blooming until the leaves turn brown and are falling off. Then it has these yellow flowers, reminiscent of spicebush in the spring, that have four perfectly squared off sepals each with there own stamen, and then four spiderleggy petals that twist outwards, apparently an attempt to be inviting.
The name "Witchhazel" comes from two things; the shrub looks like a Hazel shrub, and the branches were used to "witch" for water. They would cut them to size and then walk around the ground waiting for them to twitch downwards indicating that water was below the ground and they could dig a well there.
Speaking of witching, I was out with a farmer one time looking for underground tiles on his land. He had two coat hangers which he unbent. He balanced one in each hand and walked around looking for the same reaction; hangers twitching downward, indicating an underground tile with water flowing in it. It actually worked. Being an unbelieving engineer, I asked him to let me try it. I did and they did point downwards at the same place that he tried it. He dug down and sure enough there was a tile there. I never tried it again because I was afraid that it wouldn't work a second time and I was fascinated to think that it even worked once!
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