Nuts about hazel

By Andy Winfield

If you look around you now, at scrub and thickets on your perambulations around the city or countryside, wherever you may roam, you will see that this is the time for hazel catkins. They hang from bare branches in the low light, the morning is still so dark, the evening light lasting a little longer each day. For many, hazel flower is something that typifies this early time of year, a welcome messenger of the movement of the seasons.

This unassuming plant is so interesting, its presence is spread through the ages, and in that time, it’s formed a rich partnership with us. Around twelve thousand years ago the ice that dominated our land receded and plants moved in; hazel was one of the first plants to recolonise the British Isles, following birch and pine. In some areas of Europe, archaeologists refer to this post glacial period as ‘the nut age’ due to finding masses of hazelnut shells in their excavations. Surprisingly though, hazel is not an understory plant; so, as the forests grew up around them, they were banished to the margins where the light could be found.

Humans quickly discovered how useful this plant can be; it can be split lengthways, it can be twisted, it can be bent. It was an important component of wattle and daub; hazel woven into a lattice (wattle) and slathered with a combination of clay, straw, dung (daub) to make a weatherproof wall. We also noticed how it self-coppices, when a stem snaps to the ground, others grow up quickly to replace it; and so, four thousand years ago we started doing it ourselves. This is very useful as it prolongs the life of the tree and gives a constant supply of long straight hazel poles; some of the oldest coppiced hazels are said to be over one thousand years old! As gardeners we love hazel for supporting floppy herbaceous plants and providing support for climbing peas.

Growing side by side with us, hazel is rich in folklore; it was traditionally, and still, used for dowsing, a way to find underground water sources. In Ireland the legend of Connla’s Well has hazel as a main character; nine hazel trees grow around the well and their nuts drop into the water. The nuts contain wisdom, knowledge, and inspiration and were eaten by the salmon; the person who drank the water, or ate the salmon gained wisdom from it. Hazel was also thought to be a safe plant, warding off evil spirits.

The flowers themselves are statuesque in the low light of the season, in a day with mist and stillness they hang from the leafless hazel branches confidently, as they have done since the ice age. They don’t need insects to pollinate them, just wind to blow the pollen from tree to tree. The catkins are named after the Dutch word katteken, which means ‘little cat’ or ‘kitten’. These catkins are male flowers, above them are the small red female flower, easily missed but worth stopping by to look at. Once pollinated they will produce hazelnuts; very tricky to get hold of these days with squirrels around. These nuts are also called cobnuts, a name that derives from an ancient game called… cobnut. The rules of the game were simple; throw a nut at a pile of nuts, all the nuts that fall off the pile of nuts become the property of the nut thrower…. it’s probably more fun than it sounds.

The hazel is also well loved by dormice, and the common dormouse is also known as the hazel dormouse. These are the cutest animals in the animal kingdom and I won’t hear anyone say otherwise. They hibernate at the base of old coppiced trees with their little bellies full of hazelnut and their eyes tightly shut while they dream of hazelnuts.

So, the hazel is a plant full of stories, and now is the time to notice where they are around you, stop next to them, and say hello.