Plant · P-550

American Hazelnut

Corylus americana

American Hazelnut is a thicket-forming shrub that bears small, thick-shelled nuts good raw or cooked, and it pollinates itself, so a single plant can set a crop. It shrugs off eastern filbert blight, the disease that kills the commercial European hazelnut outright, which is why it anchors most North American hazelnut breeding programs. Its shallow rhizomes throw up new shoots a foot or two from the parent, so one planting spreads into a dense colony on its own. Deer, grouse and other birds feed heavily on its nuts, catkins and browse.