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Survives zone 3 through 8
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
A thicket-forming, multi-stemmed native shrub of eastern North America, valued both for small sweet nuts and as a key breeding source of eastern filbert blight resistance for cold-hardy hazelnut cultivars.
- Hardiness
- Zone 3–8
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Nut
- Ripens
- September
- Mature size
- Suckering shrub 2.5–5 m; coppiceable; container short-term
- Light
- Partial to full sun (forest-edge shrub)
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.5 (lime-tolerant)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Eastern North America, from Maine to Georgia, west to Saskatchewan and Oklahoma — the widest-ranging native hazel in eastern and central North America.
- Status
- Both wild and cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 3–4 yrs
- Growth speed
- Medium to fast once established, typically gaining 33–61 cm a year.
- Spacing
- 137 cm (54 in) apart — about 1.9 m² (20 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Broadly ovate to oval, 8–12 cm, doubly serrate margins, rounded to heart-shaped base; dull dark green and thinly hairy above, paler and more densely hairy beneath.
- Root system
- A shallow, flat plate of roots near the soil surface, combined with spreading underground runners that produce suckers.
- Fruit description
- A roughly 1.3 cm brown nut enclosed in a hairy, leaf-like husk with ragged edges; a thick shell around a small, sweet, oil-rich kernel.
- Propagation
- Seed is best sown fresh in autumn in a cold frame; stored seed needs a 48-hour warm-water soak, two weeks of warm stratification, then three to four months of cold stratification. Root suckers divide easily in early spring and can be planted straight into a permanent position.
- Pollination
- Monoecious and wind-pollinated but not self-fertile — plant multiples of different genetic origin to ensure cross-pollination and nut set.
- Pollinator partners
- European hazelnut / cobnut
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
Fertilizing. Most productive on soils of moderate fertility — does poorly in very rich or very poor ground; tolerates sandy, loamy or clay soils and mildly acid to mildly alkaline pH.
How it spreads. A clumping, thicket-forming shrub that spreads by root suckers from the crown; prompt removal of suckers is needed to prevent unwanted thicket expansion.
Growing tips. Resistant to eastern filbert blight, which makes it a valuable breeding resource — cross-compatible with commercial European hazelnut and used as a donor of disease resistance, cold tolerance and early-maturity genes. Also tolerates black-walnut (juglone) toxicity. Nuts harvested at the unripe 'milk stage' are softer and sweeter than fully ripe ones.
Grow journal
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