A few wildflowers, international travelers like wayside speedwell and dead nettle, bloom even in January thaw. But I’m searching for witch-hazel, a native bush that blooms in February.
Hard to Find
Witch-hazel used to be common in gravelly stream beds. Now it is hard to find. Unfortunately for it, people want the inner bark to make herbal tinctures.
Although it is possible to buy seedlings and grow this plant, many herb diggers go searching for witch-hazel in the wild. As they have no real investment in the plant or property, they strip the plant. Some plants survive. Some don’t.
Herb Diggers
Many native plants are similarly attacked. Ginseng, golden seal, bloodroot are a few.
I met someone who dug golden seal. This person had never seen it bloom as he dug the plant up before it could reproduce.
Other herb diggers strip flowers from plants like elderberries and wild plums. These plants are not difficult to cultivate and seedlings are available from state nurseries every year for very little money.
Recovery
When we moved to this place in the Ozarks, there was very little golden seal or bloodroot or echinaceae. We did our best to keep the herb diggers away.
Now I go back in a ravine to find a field of bloodroot in bloom. Another hill has a wide strip of golden seal which is scattered in other places too.
Very few people are invited to see the lady’s slippers blooming in other places. This plant, too, is popular for people to dig up and move to personal gardens where it soon dies.
Lucky Year
I mentioned searching for witch-hazel to a friend as I need pictures to include in my Dent County Flora. She happens to know where a patch of it grows. Another friend has some planted near his house.
Pictures of the plant in the wild are preferable so my friend and I will go visiting that patch. But, if I need to get a better plant picture, I may visit my other friend’s plants as they won’t be tucked into a wild community making the plants hard to see.
