Hazel: A Love/Hate Relationship Redux

Hazel shrubs and the nuts they produce have been a long-standing theme in my writings over the past 25 years. As we watch this year’s crop of nuts ripen, I have decided to revise and update an article I wrote in 2013. Hope you enjoy it.

Hazel shrubs are truly remarkable. There are few places in the world that have an understory as thick and persistent as our hazel shrub layer. However, this doesn’t prevent me from having a love/hate relationship with it.

I hate that it prevents me from seeing anything more than a metre in any direction when I go hiking, or that it makes skiing off-trail almost impossible. And I hate that it scrapes the skin off my shins when I forget that there is no such thing as a short cut when walking through it.

On the other hand, I like that its twigs and nuts create an ecological base on which so many species depend. I like that, around our house, it has created what some have coined an “asbestos forest” in which aspen trees with a thick hazel understory are almost impossible to burn, unless under extremely dry and windy conditions.

You get the idea. Hazel shrubs evoke a lot of emotion, in a yin and yang sort of way. I even posit that it can teach you some valuable life lessons, such as it’s best to go with the flow.

Generations of elk, moose, and deer have created paths through the hazel. Even though you can’t see your feet, trust that the path exists somewhere down below. And, amazingly, the trails will almost always lead to where you want to go.

In the same vein, sometimes is better to let yourself go downhill. When given a choice, I’ve learned to travel downhill when walking through hazel. Hazel bends to gravity’s will and almost always flops over in a downhill direction. Walking up a hill, even on an animal path, means walking against the grain, into a wall of pokey shrubs. Not fun.

Besides life lessons, hazel’s greatest asset is its value to wildlife. Over the years I’ve mentioned the role of nuts in the lives of squirrels, mice, blue jays and bears. Yet its role as browse for ungulates such as elk can’t be overestimated.

This was hammered home when we took a family trip to Yellowstone about 10 years ago. We really enjoyed the views, courtesy of the lack of hazel. And, as a result of the lack of shrubs, one of the highlights was that we got to see elk up close.

We noticed that the Yellowstone elk appeared quite small — the cow elk looked no bigger than fat deer, and the bulls were only the size of our cow elk.

Here in the Park region, we have records of bull elk weighing over 1000 pounds, and cow elk weighing up to 600 pounds. Why are our elk so much larger? While there are several reasons, I think the availability of food all year round is the most important.

The western elk ranges are hotter and drier than here and given the intense grazing, and subsequent lack of shrubs, there is less high-quality food available for elk in Yellowstone. As stated, in this region, hazel is always available as a food source, which I contend allows local elk to grow bigger than their western cousins.

While hazel doesn’t offer the best forage, elk can browse it all winter without expending too much energy. It would be the equivalent of us having hundreds of rice cakes spread around the house during the winter months — you’d never go hungry, but you’d sure be looking forward to having something green and tasty by spring.

The mention of food brings me to my most recent interest … harvesting hazelnuts. I’m not sure why it hasn’t occurred to me before, but hazel bushes are a great source of cheap, local nuts. They are literally free for the picking!

Like any harvesting operation, one of the biggest issues is getting the timing right. The nuts can’t be too green or they won’t store properly. However, you can’t wait too long, since there is a whole army of rodents and birds ready to literally squirrel away the potential harvest. Thus, every morning for the last couple of weeks I have been out on patrol to check on the status of the nuts.

It was, of course, a squirrel that alerted us that it was time to start the harvest. While eating supper we noticed a squirrel rummaging around in the hazel. We watched as it clambered out onto the end of a branch and then clip off a nut. Let the harvest begin!

Knowing the importance of the nuts to wildlife, our harvesting goal was pretty modest this year, and it took less than half an hour to gather about 100 nuts.

I make it sound easy, but there was some pain along with our gain. As most of you will know, hazelnut husks are coated with tiny hairs that really irritated the skin on our hands, particularly the softer skin between our fingers.

Additionally, hazel bushes are scrubby, with a mix of live and dead stems. Wading into the bush to gather the nuts resulted in a multitude of scratches on our legs and arms. And did I mention the mosquitoes?

We’re now drying out our harvest, and as we handle them, we have noticed that a fair number of the nuts have small holes in them. And lo and behold, there have been a few white fat grubs, or larvae, wiggling in the bottom of the container.

Google has informed me that our nuts are victims of the hazelnut weevil. Weevils are odd-looking beasts, but they put their long noses to use, boring holes through the nut’s hard casing. The females then lays eggs inside, creating a perfect home for their offspring.

Once the larvae are mature, they chew their way out through the shell, leaving behind a near-empty nut. These grubs then drop to the ground and burrow into the dirt, where they pupate and grow into adults the next spring.

Our nuts’ hairy husks have yet to be removed, so the true damage from the weevils is unknown. I’m still hopeful that we will end up with at least a few edible snacks once we process them. I’ll let you know in next month’s article.

» Ken Kingdon lives and works in the Riding Mountain Biosphere Reserve. If you have stories to share, send him a text at 204-848-5020.