Unsurprisingly, vigorous, long stems of the Vernal witch hazel (Hamamelis vernalis, below) are sparsely budded while older stems will soon display many clusters of small, ribbon-like flowers. But, I am curious why many of the long, mostly unbranched stems retain leaves that are, of course, brown in this second week of December.

The marcescent leaves are common on oaks and beech, but also Japanese maple varieties that are typically late to turn to autumn colors while earlier coloring maples have long been bare. My guess is that this marcescence is more prevalent than is typical due to freezing temperatures that were also the season’s first frost. The sudden freeze interrupted the process of leaves coloring, then dropping.

There is no reason to explore for further causes. No harm is done. Browned leaves will fall with rain, snow, or winter breezes, and ones that remain until spring will be pushed aside by emerging growth.

Still, I have stripped unsightly, nearly blackened leaves from bigleaf hydrangeas since this was easily accomplished. I expect little or no harm results from cleaning stems of the browned and blackened leaves. While the hydrangeas’ leaves are easily removed, foliage of maples and witch hazels does not detach so easily, so even if I was inclined to remove them from the few dozen trees, I’ll let them shed the leaves on their own timing.