Lens of Time: Witch Hazels Take Flight
Investigating the mechanics of seed dispersal in an unusual shrub in eastern North America has revealed that some plants have powers of propulsion equal to the planet’s fastest animals.
The American witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) has long harbored secrets. For centuries, Indigenous peoples in eastern North America have brewed “magic water” by boiling bark from the twiggy shrub and using it to treat all manner of maladies, from sore muscles to skin tumors. Diviners have also shaved down the forked branches and pointed them at the ground, arms outstretched, to locate water underground. And in the fall, when most other plants are beginning to go dormant to store energy for spring, the American witch hazel erupts in ringlets of spindly, golden flowers. “It really stands out as one of the most anomalous species we’ve got in the shrub diversity of eastern North America,” says Paul Manos, a biology professor at Duke University in North Carolina.
But perhaps the plant’s strangest trait is how it spreads its seeds. Unlike most understory shrubs, American witch hazels don’t depend on birds for seed dispersal. Instead, as winter approaches, they fire their glossy black seeds across the forest floor with audible pops—sometimes launching the start of a new generation as much as 10 meters (33 feet) away from the parent plant.
To learn more about these feats of flight, Manos brought a handful of witch hazels’ seed-bearing fruits to Justin Jorge, then a doctoral student in Duke’s biology department. With a high-speed camera and insatiable curiosity, Jorge discovered the mechanisms that allow the seeds to fly farther than basic physics might predict—and in the process he stumbled upon some new American witch hazel mysteries.
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