We were planting a young Corylopsis pauciflora, or buttercup winter hazel, a graceful shrub just beginning to open its pale yellow bells.

Corylopsis pauciflora (buttercup witch hazel) is a species of flowering plant in the genus Corylopsis of the family Hamamelidaceae, native to Taiwan and Japan.

Forsythia has yellow bells, and there are even yellow flowers on winter hazels and spice bushes.

The bottlebrush buckeyes, brought as mere root divisions from Longwood, are now great green mounds of palm-shaped leaves; the winter hazels, started as cuttings from Longwood, fill the air with their perfume in February.

The Arboretum now contains North Tisbury azaleas, witch-hazels, winter hazels, camellias, magnolias, stuartias, conifers, and deciduous and evergreen hollies, and incorporates a dogwood avenue and a pleached hornbeam arbor.

On that warm February day I was there, I was drawn, like everyone else, to the spicy-scented flowering viburnums and fragrant winter hazels and most enticing of all, Hamamelis mollis - or Chinese witch hazel - which dangles its gold ribbonlike blossoms over the grounds that lie to the south.

In open glades in the wood, trees and shrubs herald a new season: Early-flowering American and Asiatic magnolias with white or purplish tulip-shaped flowers held along leafless branches; winter hazels in quantity, their cowslip-scented blossom filling the air with fragrance, and groves of camellias and rhododendrons giving vibrant color.

We were planting a young Corylopsis pauciflora, or buttercup winter hazel, a graceful shrub just beginning to open its pale yellow bells.

Corylopsis pauciflora (buttercup witch hazel) is a species of flowering plant in the genus Corylopsis of the family Hamamelidaceae, native to Taiwan and Japan.