Photo: Dalgial — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source
Survives zone 3 through 7
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
A cold-hardy, many-stemmed shrub of northeast Asian forests whose small, thin-shelled, sweet-flavored nuts — unusually for a hazel — fall free of their shallow, bell-shaped husks at ripeness; valued by breeders for its frequent resistance to eastern filbert blight.
- Hardiness
- Zone 3–7
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Nut
- Ripens
- September
- Mature size
- Suckering shrub 3–7 m; coppiceable; container short-term
- Light
- Partial to full sun
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.5 (lime-tolerant)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Northeast Asia — China, Japan, North and South Korea, and eastern Siberia, in forests up to 2,400 m.
- Status
- Both wild and cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 3–4 yrs
- Growth speed
- Fast — a vigorous shrub reaching about 7 m, and quick into bearing
- Spacing
- 400 cm (157 in) apart — about 16 m² (172 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Ovate to obovate, 4–13 cm, heart-shaped base, distinctive squared-off tip often with an abrupt central point; margins irregularly double-toothed, hairy especially along the veins.
- Root system
- Readily produces root suckers, consistent with a suckering, multi-stemmed root habit.
- Fruit description
- Small nuts (roughly 10–15 mm), thin-shelled, ovoid-globose, borne 2–6 in a cluster in a bell-shaped husk barely longer than the nut; nuts fall free of the husk at ripeness, unlike most hazels, with a sweet, mild flavor.
- Propagation
- Seed sown fresh in autumn in a cold frame, or by autumn layering and by dividing root suckers, planted straight to their permanent site in early spring. Seed viability drops sharply after a year even refrigerated, and self-incompatibility plus offset flowering timing mean multiple compatible pollen sources are needed for good seed set.
- Pollination
- Self-incompatible, with male and female flowers on the same plant maturing at different times, so multiple compatible pollinizers are needed for reliable nut set; documented as interfertile with European and American hazelnut, which is exploited in disease-resistance breeding.
- 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. Tolerates sandy, loamy and clay soils across mildly acid to alkaline pH; crops best on moderate-fertility ground, doing poorly in either rich heavy soils or very poor ones.
How it spreads. A many-stemmed shrub, rarely a small tree, that suckers from the base and roots, spreading outward over time rather than remaining single-trunked.
Growing tips. Noted for great hardiness (tolerates roughly −25°C), drought tolerance, and frequent resistance to eastern filbert blight; seedlings can begin fruiting within their second year. Its relatively high interfertility with European and American hazelnut makes it a useful breeding source of blight resistance and cold-hardiness in hybrid cultivars.
Grow journal
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