I would like to create a Hazelnut (Corylus avellana, these are the more round nuts) landrace so would be interested if anyone has some seeds to share.
I have heard they have to be fresh to be planted and I have only seen a few places sell them (none in Denmark). I am intersted in size (but does not have to be the biggest) and especially flavour. For example i find Piemonte Hazelnuts taste clearly better than some unknown ones from turkey. Especially if they are slow-roasted. They taste like some rich, chocolatey nutcake. With a bit of honey they remind me of hazelnut ice cream.
And I find the tree is useful in itself as well, is native to Denmark, can be used for many building projects and apparently good firewood.
I would love to participate on a Hazelnut Landrace project with you but sadly I’ve never found any Hazelnut seeds (Even tho I live in the U.S. where they grow wild & make excellent wild edibles). The only hazelnuts I’ve ever encountered are at the grocery store.
I’ve never heard of hazelnuts requiring a non-dry state to germinate. That sort of mechanism wouldn’t gotten the entire genus dead long ago. I’m certain fully dried hazelnuts in shell will germinate just fine. I even suspect the grocery store unroasted in shell hazelnuts can grow too!
Reguardless I think this video is a must watch for anyone trying to landrace Hazelnuts (Corylus spp.).
Hazelnuts will grow very readily from fresh planted seed, we have at least thirty in various locations now, planted by the squirrels. Some I direct planted in a different garden in the autumn within a couple of months of them coming off the tree also grew. But I’ve had no germination with dry nuts in the shell direct planted in spring, even though they were still fine for eating and didn’t appear to have shrivelled at all. Though that may have been a cold stratification issue and maybe they’ll sprout this spring, who knows?
I would send you some, Markus, but I don’t know if they’ll get there safely or even if the squirrels have left me any to plant. This year’s crop was on the smaller side.
This year I was collecting as much diversity of Hazelnuts as I could find locally. This is a species that is plentiful in my zone 7 climate of Poland. In fact I have recently acquired an unproductive mono-crop of a hazelnut orchard. Im working on pruning back a lot of the trees this winter, and will likely remove a lot of them completely to make space for other things, including different varieties of hazel to help get more crossing.
The seeds that I was able to gather are all shapes and sizes, from a lot of different sources, including at least 5 distinctively different trees from family gardens. There are maybe a dozen varieties total in this mix, but im not really sure. To me they all tasted great. Some have more purple foliage, and others are green. I don’t yet know the names of specific cultivars, but the one that is mono-cropped at my place is likely “Serena”, which was originally planted as a variety to use for adding to chocolates.
From my understanding the nuts can be stored dry, which is how I have kept mine for the time being. A few moments ago I just threw them all into a bucket of water to soak for about 24 hours, and then will separate sinkers from floaters. The sinkers will be buried in sand to go through a stratification period, and then planted in late winter-early spring once I have the areas selected and prepared. Im reading that the stratification period can be as little as 90 days, all the way to 180 days at between 1-5 degrees Celsius… Im guessing this is variety dependent. I am particularly excited about these because it was a not-so-great year for hazelnuts this past season. To me this means survivors with adaptive potential.
I was also able to find and sample Corylus colurna “Turkish Hazel” this year. Its a bigger trees with smaller nuts, but even better than regular Hazel in my opinion. The oil content is higher.
I am also very interested in trading with any folks here that might want to diversify their hazel genetics in the future. If we could get ahold of any Mark Shepard hazels that would be epic!d;./.
