Hazel
Hazel navigation
The botanical name for this native broadleaved tree is Corylus avellana.
It’s well known for its long catkins heralding the first signs of spring. These catkins are the male flowers, full of windblown pollen. Look closely and you may see the tiny red female flowers that look like sea anemones and turn into nuts.
In the west of Scotland and sheltered gullies further east, hazel is home to some of the rarest species of lichen, liverwort and moss.
These rare plants need a succession of different sized stems in close proximity so that some species can colonise the smooth bark of young stems. Later, a whole range of other species can grow on the rougher texture of older, larger stems.
In the west of Scotland, you’ll notice that only the very youngest hazel stems are ‘nut brown’. They soon colonise with silver lichens – even within the bark and you can see dots and squiggles that look like markings on a map. Older stems then support frilly purple liverworts and large brown, green and grey lichens. Some of these smell of rotten fish, others smell like TCP ointment. One even looks like octopus suckers.
Use a magnifying glass to explore the rare species calling hazel home.
Facts and statistics
Here are some interesting facts about hazel.
70 years.
Rarely left to develop as a tree, but it can reach seven metres if left uncut. Usually resembles a shrub.
In late winter, male flowers form ‘lambs-tails’ catkins.
In October, ripe nuts are enclosed in leafy bracts.
Smooth, shiny brown with conspicuous yellow lenticels and scaly patches.
Hazel supports 106 insect species.
Europe (but not the Shetlands) and Anatolia.
If the young shoots escape deer browsing, they can form useful long straight stems.
These have been used traditionally for all sorts of things including barrel hoops and stock hurdles. In western woods, where stems are often coated in rare lichens, it seems that coppicing was never systematic.
Coppicing is when trees are cut close to the ground, often regularly, causing the growth of more shoots rapidly. Experts think that useful stems were cut selectively from each tree, which would have removed lots of interesting lichens.