Corylus cornuta

The beaked hazelnut can reach 4–8 metres (13–26 feet) tall with stems 10–25 centimetres (4–9+3⁄4 inches) thick with smooth gray bark,[3] but it can also remain relatively small in the shade of other plants. It typically grows with several trunks.

The leaves are green, rounded oval with a pointed tip, coarsely double-toothed, 5–11 cm (2–4+1⁄4 in) long and 3–8 cm (1+1⁄4–3+1⁄4 in) broad, with soft and hairy undersides.

The male flowers are catkins that form in autumn, pollinating the single female flowers the following spring to allow the fruits to mature through the summer.

The beaked hazelnut is named for its fruit, which is a nut enclosed in a husk with a tubular extension 2–4 cm (3⁄4–1+1⁄2 in) long that resembles a beak. Tiny filaments protrude from the husk and may stick into, and irritate, skin that contacts them. The spherical nuts are small and surrounded by a hard shell. The beaked hazel is the hardiest of all hazel species, surviving temperatures of −50 °C (−58 °F) at its northern limits.[3]

It has a shallow and dense root system which is typically only 15 cm (6 in) deep, with a single taproot which may extend 0.6 m (2 ft) below the surface.[4]

Eastern beaked hazel is found from southern Canada south to Georgia, while the Western beaked hazel occurs along the west coast from Alaska to California.

Although C. cornuta is somewhat shade tolerant, it is more common in forests with fairly open canopies than denser ones.[4] However, it is intolerant of entirely open areas that get hot and dry.[3]

Fire kills the above-ground portion of the shrub, but it resprouts fairly readily after fire from its root crown or rhizomes. It recovers after fire to the extent that American Indians in California and Oregon used fire to encourage its growth.[4]

In boreal regions, it is threatened by the invasive Siberian peashrub, which can invade and achieve dominance in understories.[4]

Native Americans used the sprouts to create baskets, fish traps, and baby carriers. The nuts were eaten and commonly used as a trade good among indigenous groups- both the Lewis and Clark expedition and prolific early naturalist David Douglas bartered for beaked hazelnuts with local peoples they encountered. It was used medicinally as emetic, for deworming, as an astringent, and for teething.[4]

It is considered an excellent nut, with the same uses as any hazelnut.[7] While the beaked hazelnut does not produce as many nuts as commercial European species such as the common hazel or filbert, it is more resistant to common diseases, and has been used in breeding programs to create high-yield, disease resistant hybrids.[4]

It is used in restoration plantings to increase biodiversity, improve food sources for wildlife, and to reduce rates of laminated root rot in nearby Douglas-fir and Sitka spruce.[4]

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  Male catkins
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  Female flowers
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  Leaves (and three fruits forming)
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  Immature fruit showing the "beak"
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  An immature nut with its hard shell

• Media related to Corylus cornuta at Wikimedia Commons
• Calflora
• Sawyer Jr., John O. (2012). "Corylus cornuta subsp. californica". In Jepson Flora Project (ed.). Jepson eFlora. The Jepson Herbarium, University of California, Berkeley.
• Corylus cornuta in the CalPhotos photo database, University of California, Berkeley