Each weekend I set myself a photographic task. I am trying to master my new Canon EOS and the only way to understand its many functions and become skilled enough to create great pictures - is to use it as much as I can. It’s like learning to use a computer. The more time you spend at the keyboard the better and more intuitive you become. The camera is an aid to my food writing and helps me to illustrate some of the pieces I write. But to practise I draw on anything which strikes me as visually interesting.
Hamamelis
This week’s project was to photograph hamamelis, commonly known as witch hazel. Witch hazel is fascinating because it puts on a magnificent display in the coldest months of the year. Weirdly beautiful spider like flowers emerge from slender, dry, brown branches in January and bloom through February. A delicate fragrance wafts from the open flowers making it a star performer in any winter garden.
There is little else in flower at this time of the year - a few snow drops hunker close to the ground. Hellebores are emerging and you might catch some heady scented viburnum. But for my photography there is nothing to beat the glorious burnt orange and dazzling yellows of the witch hazel.
Witch hazel flowers only open on the relatively warmer days of winter and will snap close if a frost descends on the garden. When flowering occurs so early in the year it begs the question - what is pollinating them? In this case it is tiny gnats that live on fungus and little bees that do the job. Maybe not in this country but certainly in its native North America and China.
The word ‘witch’ is derived from the Middle English word - wiche - meaning pliant or bendable. Hazel is derived from the use of its twigs for divining water.
The bark of witch hazel has been used for centuries to make a therapeutic infusion. This infusion has astringent properties and is still used today in pharmaceutical products such as eye drops and treatments for haemorrhoids.
And because it was there - I took this shot of a snow drop against a perfect foil - black grass or Ophiopogon Planiscapus Nigrescens.