Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Winter hazel

Corylopsis

Also called Winterhazels

Winter hazel
Photo: Kurt Stüber [1], CC BY-SA 3.0
Family
Hamamelidaceae (Hamamelid family)
Grows as
Shrub
Light
Part shade

About

Corylopsis is a genus of 25 species of shrubs in the witch hazel family, Hamamelidaceae, native to eastern Asia with the majority of species endemic to China but with some also in Japan, Korea, and the Himalayas. This genus is also known from the extinct species Corylopsis reedae described from Eocene leaf fossils found in Washington State, USA.

They grow to 2–6 m (6 ft 7 in – 19 ft 8 in) tall, often with a crown wider than the shrub's height. The leaves are ovate with an acute apex and a serrated margin, 4–20 cm (2–8 in) long and 3–15 cm (1.2–5.9 in) broad. The flowers are produced in late winter in pendulous racemes 3–9 cm (1.2–3.5 in) long with 5-30 flowers; each flower has five pale yellow petals, 4–9 mm long. The fruit is a dry capsule 10–12 mm long, containing two glossy black seeds.

How to grow it

They are often grown in gardens for their very early, yellow flowers. They do have weak branches though, which are often damaged by heavy snow loads. Corylopsis prefers to grow in semi-shade or shade, protected from strong winds. It grows best on humus-rich soils. The sweetly scented flowering branches keep well in a vase. Corylopsis also makes good bonsai plants, especially C. pauciflora.

Other Corylopsis plants

Buttercup winter-hazel · Winter hazel · Spike Winter Hazel

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Corylopsis by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…