This shrub (?) in the Old Arboretum at UBC has, I think, female flowers and male flowers. They're shiny, four-lobed, curled back on the ends, maybe 1cm across. Very rough brown sepals. Alternate branching with nice zig-zags on the branches. The flowers look a lot like the ones on that Jatropha gossypifolia that was the POTD today, but these have four lobes, not five and there don't seem to be glands on the ends of the petals. I was all excited for a minute when I first saw that.
Hamamelis sp or named cultivar Flowers are over. They would have been there in Dec/Jan/Feb Pic 4 shows empty seed pods from last year, still attached to branches. http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=e...98,d.d2k&fp=6833ad25033b59e3&biw=1245&bih=567
Thanks, Silver Surfer. Of course, now that you tell me, I can make all the connections, sure, looks just like that, including the two remaining flower petals. So the red thing is an involucre? I started out thinking it was that, and then lost my way. Gerald Straley's Trees of Vancouver map of the arboretum shows a Hamamelis virginiana there. I saw that but read right over it.
It is rather calyx, a series of sepals. Involucre is a series of bracts beneath or around a flower or flower cluster.
Not sure that it is Hamamelis virginiana. This tends to flower in the autumn. The calyx left after petals drop off, look a soft green colour. http://www.missouriplants.com/Yellowalt/Hamamelis_virginiana_page.html Possibly another Hamamelis.. such as H. x intermedia..or H. vernalis.
