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Take a walk along the Blackwater Valley Path this month and you can’t help but notice the masses of yellow Hazel catkins dangling from the bare branches. It is at this time of year that these male catkins, which have been short, green and insignificant for several months, grow up to 5cm in length and turn yellow as they open to release their pollen. The female flowers are tiny red tufts, growing out of what look like swollen buds, and are visible on the same branches as the male catkins. Pollination is by wind, and although each Hazel tree has both male and female flowers, they are self-incompatible - a single tree cannot pollinate itself. Because the trees rely on wind pollination to fertilise the female flowers this process takes place before the leaves appear.
Fertilised female flowers grow into nuts which are up to 2cm. in size and occur in clusters of one to four. Each nut is partially enclosed by a cup-shaped sheath of papery bracts, or modified leaves. The nuts ripen inside the familiar tough woody shell.
The Hazel Corylus avellana got it’s name from the Greek ‘Korus’ which means ‘cap’ referring to the shape of its ‘involucres’, the green fleshy protection that surrounds the nut shell which peal back to reveal the nut.
Hazel is deciduous, with the new leaves appearing in April each year, They are 4-8cm long and rounded, heart-shaped at the base with a pointed tip and serrated along the edges. Bright green when they first appear the leaves turn a bright yellow before being shed in October.
Hazel bark is smooth, shiny and greyish-brown in colour. It peels off in strips as the tree gets older, and the trunks are often covered in mosses, liverworts and lichens, especially in the wetter parts of its range. The yellow brown twigs are covered in long stiff hairs, and the buds are smooth and ovoid in shape.
Although Hazel can grow up to 10m in height, it is most commonly seen as a shrub because of its lack of a main trunk. Typically it has a number of shoots or trunks branching out at, or just above, ground level. In managed woodlands these hazels shoots/trunks are cut regularly – a process known as coppicing. Left unmanaged Hazel is a short-lived tree, reaching 50-70 years in age, but if it is coppiced, it will live for several hundred years. The growth of successive new stems leads to the formation of a large base, or stool, which can be up to two metres in diameter.
There are many superstitions associated with Hazel dating back from Celtic times. The Celts equated hazelnuts with concentrated wisdom and poetic inspiration, as is suggested by the similarity between the Gaelic word for these nuts, ‘cno’, and the word for wisdom, ‘cnocach’.
Hazel has long been a favourite wood from which to make staffs, whether for ritual Druidic use, for medieval self defence, as staffs favoured by pilgrims, or to make shepherds’ crooks and everyday walking sticks. The pliancy of the wood meant it could be bent into the required shape, infact it was common to bend the shoots when they were still on the tree to 'grow' the bend into a crook or walking stick. The wood readily splits lengthways and bends easily, even right back on itself, which makes it ideal for weaving wattle hurdles for use as fencing. Hazel stakes bent to a U-shape were also used to hold down thatch on roofs. Like willow, young coppiced Hazel shoots were used to weave a variety of baskets and other containers. Forked twigs were also favoured by diviners, especially for finding water.
In days gone by hazelnuts would have provided a plentiful and easily stored source of protein, and they were often ground up and mixed with flour to be made into breads. Cultivated hazelnuts called filberts take their name from St Philibert's Day on 20 August, the date by which hazelnuts were supposed to start ripening.
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