Photo: Unknown — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source
Survives zone 4 through 8
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
The classic European hazelnut/cobnut of commerce — the source of most culinary and orchard cultivars, cultivated for centuries across Europe for its rich, oily, sweet-flavored kernel eaten raw, roasted, or pressed for oil.
- Hardiness
- Zone 4–8
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Nut
- Ripens
- Sept
- Mature size
- Suckering shrub 4–6 m; coppiceable
- Light
- Full sun to partial — nut set needs sun
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.5 (lime-tolerant)
- Environment
- Woodland
- Native range
- Europe from Norway to Spain, east through the Balkans and Turkey to the Caucasus and western Asia.
- Status
- Cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 3–4 yrs
- Growth speed
- Medium, reaching roughly 3–6 m within 5–10 years.
- Spacing
- 500 cm (197 in) apart — about 25 m² (269 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Rounded to obovate, 5–12 cm, narrowly heart-shaped to rounded base, abruptly pointed tip, coarsely double-toothed margin, finely hairy on both surfaces.
- Root system
- A flat, suckering root system forming a shallow plate near the soil surface, which lets even mature plants be transplanted relatively easily.
- Fruit description
- Cobnuts have a short husk exposing part of the nut; filberts have a longer husk fully enclosing it. Kernels are sweet and oil-rich (about 60% fat), and unshelled nuts store for at least 12 months.
- Propagation
- Seed sown fresh in autumn in a cold frame; stored seed needs a 48-hour warm soak, then two weeks warm and three to four months cold stratification. Also propagated by autumn layering and by division of root suckers in early spring; orchard cultivars are commonly grafted or grown from rooted suckers or cuttings.
- Pollination
- Not self-fertile; plant at least two compatible cultivars within about 15–18 m of each other for reliable wind cross-pollination.
- Pollinator partners
- American hazelnut, filbert, Asian / Siberian hazel
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. RHS recommends a yearly balanced fertilizer in late winter and mulching young plants to retain moisture; most productive on soils of moderate fertility (pH 4.5–8.5, ideally 5–7), performing poorly on very rich or very poor ground.
How it spreads. A clumping shrub that forms a colony via suckers from the crown, with limited lateral spread.
Growing tips. Commercial growers use 'brutting' — hand-snapping side shoots in August — to encourage female flower formation, followed by winter pruning to an open goblet shape. The least cold-hardy Corylus in cultivation: temperatures below −10°C during flowering disrupt pollination, so a sheltered site free of frost pockets is best.
Grow journal
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