The Hazel (Corylus avellana)

Hazel Flowers, Grantham Ecology

Pollen records show that Hazel together with Scots Pine spread from the South around 8,500 BC and has been widespread ever since then.

Its catkins are for me as welcome as the snowdrops in signifying the start of spring and the optimism which that brings. As children we called them lambs tails and watched the clouds of yellow pollen falling from these male flowers. Hazel’s female flowers require much closer observation, appearing as tiny bright red threads which are the stigma and styles from a group of flowers; in autumn this is where the cob nuts will appear.

Although hazel tends to be regarded as a tree of the understorey in our woods it can, if left uncoppiced, grow into a fine canopy tree such as those at Muckross Peninsula in Killarney National Park, Ireland.

Hazel has been coppiced for thousands of years for its flexible poles and sticks. In Anglo-Saxon times wattle and daub was the typical building strategy and hazel poles were and are perfect for the wattle. In S. Wales at the time a single hazel stool was valued at 3 ¾ sheep.

Poles and brush wood from hazel coppicing traditionally provided bean and pea sticks and there is perhaps a return to this following the revival of coppicing in our woodland.

Kent orchards once grew hazel for the cob nuts; 7,000 acres in 1913, but there are now barely 150 acres due to less expensive imports from abroad. The Brogdale national collection of hazel varieties cultivated for cob nuts  contains 44 types.

Writing this in late February, the catkins are almost over and in a few weeks the beautiful, soft, downy leaves of coppiced hazel in woodland throughout the country will appear whilst hidden beneath them those tiny newly pollinated red flowers will develop into delicious nuts (but the grey squirrels always get there first).