Witch hazel is blooming at Morris Arboretum on land protected nearly a century ago

The witch hazel is blooming at the Morris Arboretum in Chestnut Hill.

Curly petals of yellow, rust, and red are unfurling on many of the botanical park’s 220 specimens of this unusual shrub with the folksy name, citrus-y scent, winter flowering schedule — and the power to eject its seeds 20 feet or more.

More than 50 confirmed and budding fans showed up earlier this month for the guided witch hazel tour at the arboretum, which is owned by the University of Pennsylvania. Despite the sunshine and balmy temperature, the 162 acres of hills, meadows, and wetlands along Philadelphia’s northwestern border with Montgomery County were mostly the color of toast.

Except for the welcomed, if sometimes subtle, witch hazel blossoms.

“I’m ecstatic,” longtime docent and big-time witch hazel fan Rich Clark said. “It’s really fantastic to have this many people on the tour.”

Some of the shrubs, including a craggy 1909 specimen, were planted when John and Lydia Morris were curating the gardens around Compton, as they called the Chestnut Hill summer home they built in 1887.

Descendants of a family that made a fortune in a brewing business founded in Philadelphia in 1687, the globe-trotting brother and sister were without heirs and wanted to prevent Compton from being subdivided after their deaths, said Vincent Marrocco, director of horticulture and an unofficial historian at Morris.

“Lydia had an interest in historic preservation,” he said. “She had seen a number of other large estates cut up into smaller pieces. Her grandmother’s mansion, Cedar Grove, was in the Frankford section of Philadelphia, and over time the land around it was parceled out. So she paid to have Cedar Grove and all the furnishings moved to Fairmount Park in 1926.”

» READ MORE: What exactly is witch hazel?

The siblings also sought to have an educational institution take over their Chestnut Hill property; John died in 1915, Lydia in 1932, and Compton was bequeathed to Penn. Lydia’s interest in historic preservation notwithstanding, she also directed that the fortress-like architectural hodgepodge of the house itself be torn down after her death.

It took decades for those instructions to be followed: a Hidden City Philadelphia story recounted that “after years of ill-treatment, Compton came to a violent end ... the remains were dumped in a landfill across the Delaware River” in South Jersey in 1968.

Even without a marquee house — the former gardener’s cottage serves as the Widener Visitor Center — the Morris Arboretum resembles public gardens such as Stoneleigh in Villanova, Chanticleer in Wayne, and Longwood Gardens in Chester County. These popular attractions are a legacy of the immense wealth and interest in horticulture, landscape design, and public parks among 19th-century Philadelphia-area industrialists with such names as Morris, Haas, Rosengarten, and Du Pont.

At Morris, Penn has expanded what Marrocco described as “a pretty Victorian estate garden with a nice collection of plants” into a premiere arboretum that does botanical research into subjects including the flora of the “megalopolis,” or urban corridor between New York and Washington. Another Morris research project is related to climate change and aims to determine whether the iconic Southern live oak tree can flourish in Philadelphia as temperatures rise.

The arboretum’s living collection of trees, shrubs, flowers, and ferns includes 13,000 labeled individual plants of approximately 2,600 types from 30 countries, including many Asian species as well as local “trees of record” sizes. And Morris boasts 89 variants of all five species of witch hazel known to exist worldwide, including the three that are native to the United States and one each from Japan and China.

During the tour, Clark, a semi-retired clinical microbiologist and a longtime Morris volunteer, enthusiastically shared history and facts about witch hazel.

He passed around a bottle of the astringent skin care product that’s likely more familiar to the general public than the plants from which it has been commercially made since a Connecticut company started selling it in the mid-1800s. The Native American original inhabitants of New England had long recognized witch hazel’s soothing properties.

The shrubs can grow to the size of small trees, and Clark often referred to them affectionately as “these guys” while he led the tour group along the arboretum’s walkways. Some of the witch hazel showed bright yellow and red in the sun, while others were more subdued.

“There are a variety of bloom times for these guys,” he said. “Some are nearly at full bloom and others are just beginning. Because of the severe weather, they’ve been slower this year than they typically would be.”

“The genus Hamamelis means flower with fruit. They happen at the same time, which is a very unusual thing in nature,” said Clark, adding that a witch hazel’s fruit is a nut “that is actually ejected from the plant. You can hear them pop!”

There were no popping sounds during the tour, but bees buzzed around the flowers in abundance. And while some were fragrant, others seemed to have little or no scent.

“They’re beautiful,” said Dominique Harrison, 35, a benefits specialist in the Abington School District who lives in Wyncote. She was making her first visit to the arboretum.

“Honestly, I came here because of the weather. It’s a spring-like day,” Harrison said. “When I got here, I saw they were doing this tour. I use witch hazel, but I didn’t know about the flowers. I’m learning a lot, and they’re so pretty.”

Janis Smith and her husband, Shimon Waldfogel, planted witch hazel in their back yard last summer in Blue Bell and were eagerly waiting for it to flower. The shrubs generally do so for about six weeks in February and March.

“I have a winter birthday, and I’ve never experienced having fresh flowers I could cut myself on my birthday,” Smith said.

Bonnie Inver, of Lafayette Hill, said she has a yellow-blooming witch hazel — a gift from her daughter — and took the tour to find out more about the shrubs. Others said they are interested in planting witch hazel, which is hardy, long-lived, and widely available commercially.

“This guy is over 100 and still blooming. He was here when the Morrises were here,” said Clark, standing under a majestic white oak tree and pointing to a venerable, if gnarled, shrub.

Here and there were small yellow blossoms, along with some noticeable rot.

“There’s new growth in there,” he said. “And there are still some good flowering spots on it.”

In a later interview, Clark said there is “something sort of intriguing” about witch hazel.

“Part of it is their name,” he said. “The other part is there are so few things that flower in winter. Even if the flowers don’t exactly knock your socks off, they’re something rare.”