The Hazel Nut

Southland Times, Issue 22915, 13 June 1936, Page 21 (Supplement)

The Hazel Nut

(By

Daphne Pain)

Tire common Hazel, a low-growing tree, is a native of Britain, the temperate portions of Europe and Asia, and North America. It needs rich soil and a damp climate to produce good sized nuts. The wood is hard, strong and bendy. While the tree is shedding its leaves in autumn new buds and little catkins ’re forming. The nuts are reddish-brown in colour with a little grey at one end. They are borne singly and in groups of two and three. They have a

much nicer taste if picked fresh than if bought from the shops, as the bought ones are always old. Hazel nuts like all other nuts are very fattening food, as they contain much oil. Various improved varieties of the natural species are cultivated extensively; of these there are two typ es —one with round nuts called “cobs” the other with elongated nuts called "filberts.” •

When the shell is broken away from the kernel, the kernel is found to be coated with a layer of brown stringy stuff, then there is the white part which you eat. Sometimes when the shell is opened it is found to contain no kernel but just brown stringy threads. Each nut is set in a leafy cup. One tree will produce hundreds of nuts' if it is growing in a suitable place. In March the nuts ripen and, with the yellow autumn leaves they leave their little cups and carpet the ground beneath.

The male flowers are borne in ; cylindrical catkins; the female flowers appear as mere clusters of i coloured styles at the ends of buds. The nuts are set in leafy cups with irregularly slashed margins. - Subjected to pressure, the hazel- • nuts yield an oil which has drying i properties and is therefore much used by painters; it is also used by i perfumers as a basis with which to mix expensive fragrant oils.