Hazelnut

Sold Out for 2022.

I have 2 varieties of hazelnut available this year both of which are described below.

These are first year seedlings in the range of 1' tall. They are grown in specialty nursery boxes to encourage healthy root development. There is no equivalent in nature to transplanting a tree, and it is preferable for the tree to be transplanted very small to promote root health. All seedlings are shipped dormant as bare roots.

Seedling Hazelnut: Twisted Tree

Corlyus spp

Seed source: Twisted Tree Farm

Akiva's description: Seed gathered from extremely productive hybrid hazel bushes. The mother plants originate from breeding programs in the upper midwest. They are very tough plants with huge crops at a young age.

Seedling Hazelnut: Badgersett Short Bush

Corlyus spp

Seed source: Badgersett Research Farm via EFN

EFN's description: 

Corylus complex hybrids (C. americana x C. avellana x C. cornuta)

Origin: Southeast Minnesota via NW Illinois. Badgersett's hazelnut hybrid swarm is a mix of wild American hazelnuts (C. americana) from Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Wisconsin; heritage European hazelnut (C. avellana) cultivars from the Mediterranean and Central Europe; and a wild beaked hazelnut (C. cornuta) from Peace River, Alberta; plus whatever wild pollen has managed to float into the various breeding plots over the last century. Initial F1 crosses between the various species were made by amateur breeders in the 1910s-1950s. Our seed parents are at least 3 generations of selection and recombination (most are 4 or 5) past the initial F1 species cross.

Improvement Status: Cultivated, semi-domesticated

Life Cycle: Perennial

Hazelnuts are a delicious, nutritious, calorically dense nut crop borne on rugged, adaptable, medium-size shrubs. Native to much of the temperate Northern Hemisphere, hazelnuts have been a prized and highly sought-after food source - both for people and wildlife - wherever they're found, since time immemorial. 

Our open-pollinated, hybrid hazelnut seeds come from bushes selected by Philip Rutter of Badgersett Research Farm, from a large expansion planting in NW Illinois of seedlings of some of Badgersett's most promising breeding lines. Badgersett's decades of breeding work has been to hybridize two species of hazelnut native to North America - the American and the beaked hazelnut - with the European hazelnut, to create a productive, in order to create a resilient crop that combines the useful qualities of each species and is adaptable to both small and large-scale agricultural production. We're helping to continue that work by making this seed available to the general public.

Seed is selected based on visual assessment of total kernel productivity, kernel size,  and the overall characteristics of the maternal breeding line, including bush vigor, pest, and disease resistance. Our most important criteria is high total kernel productivity with adequate kernel size. Our seed parents have nuts large enough for currently existing mechanical cracking and processing machinery, but most are smaller than commercial European hazelnuts. Most bushes have kernels that average 0.5-0.65 grams when dried hard. A few will be larger. 

See here for a detailed explanation of the selection criteria for these seeds. 

Short bushes have a mature bush height of 7-9'. Their size, shape, and stem thickness tend to strongly resemble the American hazelnut. Based on the performance of the parent breeding lines, mature bush height appears to be highly heritable, but there will be some variation - some "short" seeds will make "tall" plants, and some "tall" seeds will make "short" plants.