I hate to do this to you in October, but witch hazel is a fraud.
No coven ever claimed it. No one was burned over it. The “witch” in witch hazel comes from the Old English wice, meaning pliant or bendable, the same root that gives us the wych elm. It’s a word about flexible branches, not flying ones. And the “hazel” is also a lie: English colonists arrived in North America, saw a shrub with leaves like the hazel back home, and named it after a tree it isn’t related to.
So: not a witch, not a hazel. A plant with a completely fabricated identity.
I respect it enormously.
Then It Gets Weird Anyway
Those bendy branches turned out to be perfect for dowsing, the old practice of walking a field with a forked stick and waiting for it to dip toward hidden water. Colonists had used hazel and wych elm for this in England, and the new shrub filled in nicely. Dowsing came to be called “water witching,” and suddenly the plant with the innocent name had a spooky side hustle.
It earns the reputation in other ways. Witch hazel blooms when everything else is dying. In late October and November, after its leaves have dropped, it puts out spidery yellow flowers on bare gray branches, showing a total lack of respect for the upcoming winter. And to add insult to injury, the cooler air finally ripens last year’s seed pods causing them to burst open with an audible snap and fire their seeds across the forest with a distance of up to thirty feet. Thus receiving the moniker, the "Snapping Hazel." Imagine walking through the woods at dusk and being shot by a shrub.
(*Note: I am totally convinced that naming was done by a man. Just because a girl gets a little cranky when the weather turns cold. Leave her alone with her book, her cat, and her peppermint mocha and she will be fine.)
Its botanical name, Hamamelis, roughly means “together with fruit,” because it carries flowers and fruit at once. Life, death, and reproductive chaos on the same branch. Very on brand for this time of year.
The Real Magic
Long before anyone bottled witch hazel, the Native peoples of eastern North America, including the Osage, Potawatomi, and Mohegan, were boiling the bark and twigs and using the decoction on skin. Settlers learned it from them. By the mid-1800s it was being distilled commercially in Connecticut, and it has been sitting in American medicine cabinets ever since.
What makes it work is the tannins, the same family of compounds that makes strong black tea feel dry in your mouth. On skin, tannins are astringent: they give that clean, tightened, freshly toned feeling.
Here’s the part most people don’t know. The clear witch hazel sold today is a distillate, and tannins mostly don’t survive distillation. What you get is largely water, a little plant aroma, and about 14% alcohol, which is where much of that “tight” feeling comes from. It’s also why so many people may find it drying.
And that brings me to a COMPLETELY UNRELATED announcement.
***We interrupt this blog post for a word from our sponsor***
Our sponsor is me.
I am the sponsor.
This post is brought to you by the Hagstone Hill’s Witch Hazel Toners, made by a woman who spent way too long researching tannins...while drinking tannins...wine tannins, not spitting bark tannins. Anyway...in our beautiful toners we use witch hazel extract (tannins intact) in a hydrosol base with niacinamide and other skin beneficial botanical extracts. No alcohol. No sting. No feeling like your me-time just turned into happy hour.
Side effects may include: calm, toned skin, a smug sense of superiority over the drugstore aisle, and an urge to tell people that witch hazel isn’t actually a hazel.
You’re welcome in advance.
***We now return you to your regularly scheduled spooky shrub***
In conclusion
I definitely feel an affinity with our girl Witch Hazel. Here is a girlie who basically lost her identity because she "looks" like some bimbo back on the block, AND gets a bad rap because she gets a little testy during her moon cycle and shoots trespassers who tromp on her begonias. She's not bad. She's bad-ass!
I say yes, you can join us, my dear.
Come. Be a witch.
Welcome to the coven.