In our woods you can miss something if you blink, in time as well as space. I was surprised by a shrub behind our house with perfect miniature flowers in the middle of November. My partner's mother and I took a closer look and discovered dried leaves and empty nut capsules, but even with two tree/shrub books we still couldn't identify it.



I have to admit that I'm not primarily a plant person (you may have gathered this if you read the entry about accidentally picking up poison ivy berries). I've learned many individual species over the years, but the problem comes when I'm confronted by an unknown specimen. I experience plant identification keys as if they were "choose your own adventure" books - I blunder along a path and only learn I've made a misstep when my character dies at the end. Or in this case, when there's no way that the twig in my hand matches the twig in the book. Plants seem easy enough if you just scratch the surface. It's easy to distinguish a goldenrod from an aster, but is it an early, sweet, or lance-leaved goldenrod? Or one of the many other species native to New York? Then there's the problem that, compared to vertebrates, plants readily hybridize across species lines. It's enough to make one long for a confusing fall warbler.

Fortunately for birders, most male birds in breeding plumage want to be identified (at least by female birds). Many native plants have distinct characteristics at some time of the year that can't be confused with other plants in the same area. Having given up on a systematic search, I flipped through one of the books and stumbled across a picture of the nut capsule, finally identifying the shrub as witch-hazel.

With this knowledge in hand, I was able to take a closer look at the plant in front of me as well as in the literature. In late fall when they bloom, the flowers sport long yellow streamers. Now where there still are petals they are orange and withered. The nut capsules too are remnants. They eject their black seeds like slow-motion, armored touch-me-nots around the time the plant flowers. While I've missed both events, my sources mention that some individuals bloom in November and even December, so maybe I still have a chance to see the flowers if I pay attention.