Corylus avellana; ‘Common Hazel’

 Corylus avellana or the common hazel is native to Europe and western Asia.  One of the hazels main uses in Britain was for creating hedgerows which are traditional boundaries between lands

Corylus avellana is a normally a shrub reaching up to 6 meters in height with deciduous rounded leaves around 6-12 cm long and across, both sides are hairy with a double-serrate margin. However the hazel is often described as a bush rather than a tree, as its often produces several trunks or shoots rather than just one. The brown bark is shiny, and peels away in strips, with the twigs being covered in hair.

Hazel is also cultivated for its nuts, the kernel of the seed is edible and used raw, roasted or ground into a paste. the nuts are in clusters of 1-5 together, the nut is inside a husk with encloses about three quarters of the nut. The nut is roughly spherical to oval, the nuts fall when ripe after about 8 months after pollination.

The flowers come out before the leaves in spring with single-sex wind pollinated catkins. Males catkins are the large of the two by being around 10cm, compared to female catkins which are hidden in buds