American hazelnut
Family
BetulaceaeScientific Name
Corylus americanaOther Common Names:
American filbert
Synonyms (former Scientific Names):
Corylus americana var indehiscens
Leaves
Leaves are deciduous, alternate, broadly oval with a heart-shaped or rounded base, 8-12(-15) cm long and 12 cm wide, acuminate, doubly serrate, hairy beneath, the petiole with stiff, glandular hairs.
Identifying Characteristics
Birch family (Betulaceae). Native shrubs growing 1-3(-4) meters tall, strongly rhizomatous and forming colonial thickets; main stems (or trunk) straight, with spreading, ascending branches, the twigs slender, zigzag, light brown, with numerous stiff, red-glandular hairs.
Flower Seed Head
Male (staminate) and female (pistillate) flowers are separate, but both types present on each plant (the species monoecious); male flowers numerous in long, pendulous stalks (catkins) 8-10 cm long, in clusters of two or three near branch tips, appearing in the fall, but opening the following spring. Female flowers are several in a scaly bud, tiny and inconspicuous with only bright red stigma and styles protruding from the gray-brown buds, almost completely enclosed by bracts, near the end of the twigs.
Seed Fruit
Fruit is a light brown, acorn-like nut 1-2 cm long, wider than long, enclosed in two, leafy, coarsely toothed (husk-like) bracts. The common name reflects its being native to North America and hazel is from the Old English name for filbert
Where Found
Widespread in eastern North America,
Maine west to Saskatchewan and North Dakota,
south to eastern Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Georgia,
not found along the Gulf coast region.
Life Cycle
perennial
Plant Type
Shrub