Witch Hazel (Hamamelis 'Pallida') under a blanket of snow in late February and a closer view of the flowers without snow:

Hamamelis resembles the common hazel, but has golden-yellow spidery flowers on the bare branches from December to late February. It likes fertile, moist, well-drained, neutral to acid soil, and becomes a large shrub or small tree (15 feet tall and wide after 20 years). Mine is in a north-east corner, and seems quite happy there. The flowers supposedly have a strong sweet smell which I have never been able to detect. I'm told that if you breathe on the blossoms to warm them up the perfume becomes obvious; I don't care - it's so cheering to see it through the window on a dark winter's day.