Photo: Orjen, Pavle Cikovac — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source
Survives zone 4 through 7
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
The tallest and most tree-like of the cultivated hazels — a single-trunked 'tree hazel' from southeast Europe and western Asia, grown mainly as an ornamental or street tree for its formal pyramidal habit and corky bark, with thick-shelled nuts similar in flavor to common hazelnut but smaller.
- Hardiness
- Zone 4–7
- Habit
- Tree
- Edible part
- Nut
- Ripens
- September
- Mature size
- Tree 12–25 m, single-trunked and pyramidal — the Turkish hazel does not sucker
- Light
- Full sun to partial
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.5 (lime-tolerant)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Southeastern Europe to western Asia — the Balkans, Turkey, the Caucasus, northern Iran, and the mountains of Afghanistan — typically on limestone mountain forests and canyons up to about 1,500 m.
- Status
- Rootstock
- Years to fruit
- 3–4 yrs
- Growth speed
- Slow-growing, eventually reaching up to about 25 m.
- Spacing
- 1280 cm (504 in) apart — about 164 m² (1764 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Ovate to obovate, 6–15 cm, deeply heart-shaped base, abruptly pointed tip, coarsely double-toothed to lobed margin, hairy along the veins beneath; bright green and glossy.
- Root system
- A shallow, flat root system forming a plate near the soil surface; non-suckering.
- Fruit description
- Nuts in close clusters of two or more, 12–16 mm wide, thick-shelled, with flavor similar to common hazelnut but the nut is smaller and notably thicker-shelled.
- Propagation
- Raised from seed (fresh autumn sowing, or warm-then-cold stratification), though seedlings establish rather slowly; its non-suckering habit makes it the standard commercial rootstock onto which fruiting hazel cultivars are grafted.
- Pollination
- Unusually among Corylus species, self-fertile — a single tree can set nuts without a separate pollinator.
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. Grows best on soils of moderate fertility, avoiding very acid or very rich heavy soils; tolerates poor, alkaline, gravelly soils and drought once established, so heavy feeding usually isn't needed.
How it spreads. A single, straight-trunked tree that doesn't sucker — this non-suckering habit is its defining difference from shrubby Corylus species.
Growing tips. Widely used as a street/urban tree — tolerant of drought, cold, air pollution and compacted alkaline soils, with a formal, broadly domed to pyramidal crown. Less well suited to mild, moist maritime climates than to continental ones. Its timber is dense and pink-tinged, used in joinery.
Grow journal
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