Hazelnut

“ Tip or simple layering seems to be the most satisfactory method of propagating the hazelnut and filbert. Shoots or suckers, one-year old and arising from the base of the plant are used. They are left attached to the mother plant and are bent over until the ends of tips rest upon the soil.
To encourage root growth, the underside of the branch to be covered with soil is frequently notched or ringed. The part of the branch in contact with the moist soil is then covered leaving a small portion of the end protruding. ”

“ Stoke in the Roanoke area.
Dr. Crane has observed the planting of a few bushes of the American hazelnut in Virginia. Their performance has been somewhat better than has been that of the European filbert, especially as to hardiness, and these American hazelnuts have borne more satisfactory crops of nuts than have the European filberts. The nuts produced by the native varieties, however, are small in size, thick shelled, and the kernels are small and lack quality. ”

“ Each of those will well repay study, especially the fruit and seeds of oxalis. The witch-hazel bears a hard, woody, nut-like fruit, as large as a hazelnut; when ripe, the apex gaps open more and more, the sides pressing harder against each smooth seed, till finally it is shot, sometimes for a distance of thirty feet. ”

“ This grows a goodly tall straight tree, fraught with many boughs, and slender branches bending downward: the old being covered with discoloured chapped bark, and the younger being browner by much. The leaves at the first breaking out are crumpled, and afterwards like the beech leaves, but smaller and greener, and dented about the edges. It bears small short cat-skins, somewhat like those of the hazelnut-tree, which abide on the branches a long time, until growing ripe, they fall on the ground and their seed with them. ”

“ Attesting to our great faith in the value of the nut trees for wildlife conservation and restoration, the Ohio Division of Conservation and Natural Resources has distributed free of charge, to cooperating landowners: 132,000 American hazelnut, 1000 European and American hazel hybrids, 1000 pecans, 1000 butternut, over one thousand shagbark hickory, 1500 Asiatic chestnut, 2000 black walnut trees, and more than 50 bushels of black walnut nuts for seed spotting. ”

“ The filbert is the fruit of the cultivated hazel tree (Corylus avellana L.) . The nut contains a kernel having a pleasant taste and is quite oily and nutritious. It is not cultivated to any extent in this country where we rely principally upon the wild hazel for the hazelnut. The composition of the filbert is shown in the following table (edible portion, 47.9; refuse, 52.1) :
The filbert is produced in large quantities on the Asiatic shore of the Black Sea. ”

“ Some birds will take the blight north and our friends in Canada will finally have it, so cheer up, the worst is yet to come, but it will be a good many years.
MR. CORSAN: The blight has got to the extreme northern part of the chestnut growth, that is, to the top of Lake George. The chestnut doesn't go a quarter of a mile beyond Silver Bay.
DR. MORRIS: I have found chestnut trees in Quebec.
PROFESSOR NIELSON: Speaking of the range of nut trees, I have seen the hazelnut in the Saskatchewan several hundred miles north of the international boundary and at Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. ”

“ It is well known, a well established fact, that our common native American hazelnuts both Corylus rostrata the beaked hazel, and Corylus Americana the American hazel in their present state of appearance are for various reasons not very well adapted nor desirable for cultivation, particularly Corylus rostrata, a very slow growing variety with unusual small and hard shelled nuts, so small and hard that even the rodents of field and forest refuse to gather and eat them. ”

“ FILBERTS AND HAZELNUTS The European filbert which is grown so successfully in Oregon and Washington has not been generally successful in Missouri. This has been due mainly to winter injury, resulting either in the killing of the staminate catkins by cold, or of the developing catkins by late spring freezes and frosts. For good fruiting they need cross pollination. Some of the well-known and popular filbert varieties are Barcelona, Du Chilly, Medium Long and Italian Red. Rush, Winkler, and others, are partly or purely American hazelnuts. ”

“ They grow upon large bushes, some about as high as the common apple trees in England, and either in the high or low, but always barren ground.
3. Hazelnuts are there in infinite plenty, in all the swamps; and towards the heads of the rivers, whole acres of them are found upon the high land.
4. Hickory nuts are of several sorts, all growing upon great trees, and in an husk, like the French walnut, except [Pg 105] that the husk is not so thick, and more apt to open. Some of these nuts are inclosed in so hard a shell, that a light hammer will hardly crack them ”

“ The tiny mandibles at the end of the trumpet bite the shell almost as easily as an edged tool of steel would do it; and moreover the weevil chooses its time. It is in May, when the hazelnuts are beginning to grow and their shells are soft, that the task is undertaken. The insect attacks the nut at the base through the green covering called the cup. As soon as the hole is made, an egg is laid inside the nut and in a week the larva is hatched out. ”

“ But where the peach will grow you can raise the almond profitably. Among the hazel nuts the most beautiful of the entire series is the tree hazel that grows about as large as the smaller oaks, and that is said to bear twenty-five or thirty bushels of hazelnuts a year,—enormous crops. ”

“ Amongst "little woods" the dearest of all to the school-boy must surely be the hazel-copse! The Hazel (Corylus avellana) is never a large tree. It is, however, long lived, and of luxuriant growth. When cut it "stoles" or throws up shoots very freely, and when treated so will live a hundred years. With a single stem, Mr. Loudon assures us, it would live much longer. Filbert-hazels are a variety with longer nuts. Hazels are cultivated not only for the nuts, but for corf-rods, [1] hoops, fencing, &c., and hazel-charcoal, like beech-charcoal, is used for crayons. ”

“ An objection to the construction of hedges of hazel is the injury not infrequently done to them by the nut-gatherer, who “with active vigour crushes down the tree” (Thomson’s Seasons, “Autumn”) , and otherwise damages it.
The filbert, [3] among the numerous varieties of Corylus Avellana, is extensively cultivated, especially in Kent, for the sake of its nuts, which are readily distinguished from cob-nuts by their ample involucre and greater length. It may be propagated by suckers and layers, by grafting and by sowing. Suckers afford the strongest and earliest-bearing plants. ”

“ The ideal nut of genus Corylus should combine qualities of both hazels and filberts. Such a hybrid should have the bushy characteristics of the American hazel with its blight-resisting properties and its ability to reproduce itself by stolons or sucker-growth. It should bear fruit having the size, general shape, cracking qualities and good flavor of the filbert as popularly known. The hybrids I am growing at my farm, which I call "hazilberts" and which are discussed later, seem to fulfill these requirements. The plants may be grown as bushes or small trees. ”

“ The hazel, willow, and elm, are all attracted by springs of water; some perhaps have the virtue intermittently; the rod, in their hands, will attract one half hour, and repel the next. The rod is attracted by all metals, coals, amber, and lime-stone, but with different degrees of strength. The best rods are those from the hazel, or nut tree, as they are pliant and tough, and cut in the winter months. A shoot that terminates equally forked is to be met with, two single ones, of a length and size, may be tied together with a thread, and will answer as well as the other. ”

“ Over the glade a dome of deep-blue sky, and a warm loving sun, whose drowsy shadows lingered and moved slow.
After a while they reached the hazel bushes, acres upon acres of them; tall straight rods, with tapering upturned branches, whose leaves fell in a shower when the stem was shaken. Nuts are the cunningest of fruit in their manner of growth; outwardly they show a few clusters fairly enough, especially bunches at an almost inaccessible height; when these are gathered, those who are not aware of the ways of the hazel naturally pass on, leaving at least twice as many unseen. ”

“ It is seldom practical to move native trees very far from their natural range, nor is it necessary to do so in this part of the north: We have four fine, native nut trees: the hazel, the butternut, the black walnut and the hickory. In my experience, these four have completely demonstrated their practical worth.
If commercialization is the primary hope of the nut tree planter, he should first consider the large, hardy hybrids, known as hazilberts, which I have produced between a large Wisconsin wild hazel and European filberts. ”

“ Hazilberts equal the best European filberts in every way, without the latter's disadvantage of susceptibility to hazel blight and its lack of hardiness. They are as hardy as the common wild hazel and are more adaptable to environment and soil conditions than any other native nut tree. They may be trained into trees or allowed to grow as large bushes. Like all other filberts and hazels, they, too, need companion plants for cross pollinization to obtain full crops of nuts. ”

“ For the growing of young plants for commercial purposes, for the trade, I should recommend liberal manuring at all times. (Applause.)
Question: Is the hazel a long lived tree?
Mr. Vollertsen: I have known trees for almost forty years that are bearing good fruit year after year, although not always a good crop. They don't seem to grow so rapidly at that age as when younger.
Dr. Morris: Hazels seem to graft pretty well on each other. I think the tree hazel is going to be our most successful stock for grafting. However, I have grafted on the Corylus avellana. ”

“ The closely observant student of the countryside, during his autumnal rambles through the copses and spinneys, reflects upon the profusion of the hazel-nut, and the circumstance that this crop is permitted to fall to the ground to rot, or to suffer only partial appropriation by the thrifty squirrel. Surely, he ruminates, such wild fruit possesses some commercial value. The shell can be turned into a high grade charcoal for the laboratory, while the nut itself is rich in oil, which it ought to pay to extract, leaving a residue to offer an excellent winter-feed for cattle. ”

“ Each species adheres closely to its own food plant. The hickory-nut weevil does not attack hazel-nuts nor the hazel-nut weevil hickory-nuts. None of the acorn-infesting species will seek for food in the nuts of chestnut, hickory or hazel. Once the chestnut weevils are absent in a locality, there is no chance that oak trees will serve as a means of spreading the weevils back into the locality. So closely confined are these weevils to their particular food plants that many of them distinguish between the different species of oak and will oviposit only in certain kinds of acorns. ”

“ As I was very eager to see what the new crosses would be like, I fertilized the blossoms with a gunshot mixture of pollen from other plants such as the Winkler hazel, the European filbert and the Jones hybrid hazel. Certain difficulties arose in making these hybrids, mainly due to the curiosity of the squirrels who liked to rip open the sacks covering the blossoms which were being treated. Deer mice, too, I found, have a habit of climbing the stems of hazel bushes and gnawing at the nuts long before they are mature enough to use for seed. ”

“ Hazels might be used for interplanting among chestnut or hickory trees with no danger that the hazel nuts would become infested by the weevils that develop in the chestnuts or hickory nuts. This habit of the weevils is greatly to the advantage of the person who would plant a particular kind of nut outside its natural range, or at a considerable distance from any other trees of its kind. He could do so with reasonable assurance that the weevil attacking his species of nut would not occur upon his trees until brought into the locality by artificial means. ”

“ The common hazel or nut-tree affords a fine illustration of the structure of that division of plants to which most of our common European trees belong, and which, from its including the oak, is called 'the oak-tribe.' I shall not, however, expatiate on the hazel, the pride of our old copse-banks, but look beneath its long slender branches, and there, lurking modestly, do I see that pretty little yellow flower, the lesser celandine (Ficaria verna.) Every one knows this little early blossom by sight, if not by name. ”

“ All layered branches or little shoots should be cut back to about 3-4 eyes above the ground and remain in the ground about one year, the earth around the parent plants and between the layers must be well worked throughout the whole season and if necessary mulched with half rotten manure. After the layers are well rooted, they should be taken up, cut apart and properly trimmed and planted in the nursery row, where they remain until large enough for market or orchard planting. There is but very little pruning of the young hazel-plants necessary until they are planted in the orchard. ”

“ The New Hampshire Horticultural Department would gladly welcome any information concerning the propagation of the butternut that would make grafting or budding successful.
The best possibility in developing commercial nut crops in New Hamp [Pg 52] shire apparently lies first in the use of the hazel or filbert. Although the European filbert has not been very successful, such varieties of the American hazel as Winkler and Rush look promising. The Winkler has borne heavy crops but in a short summer season the nuts do not always mature fully in the fall. ”

“ The shell is the ovary that has become woody and hard; the ragged-edged leathery "shuck" is the enlarged bracts that surrounded the minute flower.
The Hazel likes a good soil, and will not really flourish without it, though it will grow almost anywhere, except where the moisture is stagnant. Its wood is said to be best when grown on a chalky subsoil. Of course, as timber, the Hazel does not count, but its tough and pliant rods and staves are valuable for many small uses, such as the making of hoops for casks, walking-sticks, and—divining-rods! The bark is smooth and brown. ”