Ooooh, that is beautiful. Another to add to the list. Sigh. Thanks for brightening my day, whaas!

Did it have good fall color too? Blooms are awesome!

cool

so that is the garage wall ...

you have it inside the garage..???

any fragrance ...

ken

May have walked by one of these in a front yard here yesterday. Same erect habit and dinky purple flowers.

Plant is listed as H. 'Amethyst' by C. Lane (Witch Hazels, Timber Press, 2005) who says it was among one hundred seedlings raised from open-pollinated seed of 5 different cultivars, all of them H. x intermedia clones except for H. vernalis 'Sandra' and H. 'Brevipetala'.

Hmm, interesting color. I think I prefer 'Moonlight' though for attention getting. How's the fragrance ?

Nice plant, whaas. Thanks for the pix.

tj

Concerned that this beautiful plant would retain leaves, in an annoying way, as some of mine do. 'Diane' Did that so much I got rid of it. Below is 'Rochester' on my property, now.

All, thanks for the comments. I didn't notice any fragrance...I'm not one to notice on any plant though. More of visual guy vs scent.

I got this from Rarefind and it didn't have any retained leaves. Although I've heard of some complain about retained leaves on H. vernalis, they don't retain leaves here. The Asian hybrids retained leaves and don't get any fall color here. Plus they only flower during mild winters and have dinky flowers.

Ron, are you saying this is a possible H. vernalis hybrid? I wouldn't say the flowers are dinky by any means, then again I don't get to see the best of the Asian hybrids outside my area.

Bogturtle, check out the link below regarding leaf retention. Diane is listed as one of the worst for leaf retention.

Leaf Retention

"This time of year a question that often appears on our blog is which
cultivars are best for not retaining their leaves? Unfortunately, some
cultivars of witch hazel tend to hold their leaves from the previous
fall thus masking the spring flowers. This does not appear to be solely
to be a condition of genetics, but also might have to do with weather
condition, soil conditions, and possibly the species of witch hazel on
which it was grafted."
- The Scott Arboretum

I'm fairly certain the weather plays a (big) part in leaf retention. I have a yellow flowering Hamamelis intermedia (cultivar unknown) in my garden for more than 10 years. Most years it will only hold on to approximately 10-20% of its leaves but last year it was more than double that. It took me more than an hour to remove the leaves with my secateurs. Well worth the effort though as I think the brown leaves look awful.

Agreed that they look awful. I have H. 'Rochester' and 'Angely' now,
that are so heavily leaved that the flowers are hardly showing. H.
'Robert', 'Jelena' 'Wisley Supreme' and 'Arnold Promise' look good, with
hardly any leaves retained.
The only form of the American species,
H. virginiana ?, that I know will loose its leaves before it fully
blooms, (in Fall) did that again.

H. v. 'Harvest Moon'.
Cannot bring myself to spend time
taking leaves off, but I suspect the ones I saw at Longwood Gardens had
been attacked, in that way, by their staff. In my visit, in Feb. of
2004, the trees were leafless.