Plant · P-551

Beaked Hazelnut

Corylus cornuta

Beaked Hazelnut bears the best-tasting wild hazelnut in North America, with a shell thin enough to crack by hand, unlike the American hazelnut's thicker one. It grows as a dense, multi-stemmed thicket that spreads by rhizome and resprouts hard after fire or cutting, so a single planting quickly becomes a stand. It starts bearing in five to six years, which is fast for a nut, but jays and squirrels cache and eat most of the crop unless it is picked early. Once the thicket closes overhead it casts deep shade, letting almost nothing establish beneath it.