Flowers of Filbert

 

As far as cultivated plants go, the flowers of the Contorted Filbert (Corylus avellana) are my favourite. Those are millimeters showing on the ruler in front of the bright pink female blossoms. The catkins (dangly bits) are the males. If pollinated, the females will form a "hazelnut." In the past, I've managed to protect a few of them from the birds and squirrels until they were mature, and yes, they held tiny, rather flat nutmeats. There are some who claim they are edible and I do not doubt that, but at the same time, you'd be hard put to collect enough of them to fill a tablespoon. That's never an issue here. The varmints eat them long before they are fully formed, sometimes even when they're in the budding stage shown here. And that's what my yard is about, anyway: providing habitat and food for the critters who so amuse me.

Earthballs, Scleroderma Areolatum

Day 347: The Earthballs are back. Last year, a botanical mystery erupted under the contorted filbert, one which required breaking out the microscope to examine spores. By doing so, I determined that these unusual "puffballs" were Scleroderma areolatum, a poisonous species which ejects its dark, ashy spores through a single apical pore when fully mature. The name "Scleroderma areolatum" gives hints as to the identification: "sclero-" meaning "hard," "-derma" referring to skin, and "areo-" suggesting that the surface of the species in question would be pitted or otherwise distinctly marked. (I love descriptive Latin nomenclature! "Something smithii" tells you absolutely nothing about what you should be looking for.) To the best of my knowledge, my little Scleroderma patch is the only place these grow in Pierce County, although it would be interesting to look in groves of our native filberts to see if there might be an association with Corylus and the same or other species of Scleroderma. In any event, sometimes even a walk around my yard can be exciting.

Blooming Filbert

Day 135: The bloomin' filbert is in bloom! Harry Lauder (Contorted Filbert, Corylus avellana "Contorta") has put forth a profusion of blossoms, and you'd never know it even if you were standing only three feet away unless you knew exactly what to look for. But if you do know and peer closely, you'll be rewarded with the sight of tiny hot-pink stars. These are the female flowers of this monoecious species. The drooping catkins are the males. Once fertilized, non-edible filberts (nuts) will form inside the ovaries. Ttuly, this seems like a good example of overkill. When the catkins begin shedding pollen, it comes off the tree in clouds! A couple of years ago, I caged a few of the clusters to see if nut meats would develop inside. Usually, they're consumed by the birds and squirrels before they ripen. The few I protected did in fact form nuts somewhat smaller than a lightly flattened pea, but they are not fit for human consumption.

A Favourite Flower

Day 108: As far as favourite flowers go (excluding rare species), it ranks right up there with Wild Ginger (Asarum caudatum) and Skunk Cabbage (Lysichiton americanus) as far as I'm concerned. These teeny-tiny tufts go unnoticed if you don't know exactly what to look for, and when. I've been watching them develop on the Contorted Filbert over the last few days, hoping that it wouldn't be pouring down rain when they burst open. The pendulous catkins you see in the background are the males, the pollen producers on this monoecious shrub. In an experiment last year to see if my tree would produce hazelnuts, I caged several clusters of burgeoning nuts to protect them from squirrels and birds. Predictably, those not caged were devoured. There was nothing I could do about worms (a common pest which eats the nut from the inside out, having accessed the center of the ovary during the blossoming phase), but it appeared that the ones I had caged were developing. However, when I cracked them open months later, there were no nuts inside, nor was there any tell-tale worm frass. From this, I conclude that despite forming shells, the tree is not self-fertile at the very least, and perhaps sterile altogether.

Filberts

Day 7: Some of you may recall that Harry Lauder, the contorted filbert, bloomed this last spring and began to set fruit. I had found empty shells under the tree at least once before in its thirty-year lifetime, but had never seen nuts hanging from its branches. Previous experience with filberts during my growing-up years suggested that it was highly likely that squirrels, birds or worms would carry them away before they could mature, so I built cages around several clusters as a horticultural experiment. Some critter outfoxed my efforts on all but two bunches, and these fell off naturally and were caught by the wires. They were still green when I brought them in the house, but are slowly turning the brown typical of the species. Will they have meats inside? If so, will they prove to be edible? Or will worms emerge at some point in the future, as they did from the acorns I had sitting in a basket? This experiment is not over yet, but at least it has demonstrated that Harry Lauder can indeed self-pollinate.

Filbert In Flower

Day 167: A few days ago, the Nisqually Land Trust posted a photo in social media of a flower which they described as one of their favourites and posed the question, "Do you know what it is?" I leapt on the chance to be first to identify it by responding, "Beaked Filbert (Corylus cornuta)!" But that set me to wondering why I had never featured the female flowers on my Contorted Filbert, aka Harry Lauder's Walking Stick in my blog. Well, folks, here you have it as a Penny Perspective! It's hard to imagine that teeny-tiny little flower giving rise to a hazelnut at maturity, but that's the way it goes...providing, of course, that the birds don't eat the sweet flower buds first. Juncos in particular are fond of them (they like blueberry buds, too), so my tree has produced very few nuts over thirty years, and those were either carried away by squirrels or holed and devoured by worms. I have never found one with a nut inside. In case you were wondering, the long, dangling catkins are the male flowers. They produce the pollen which fertilizes the female flower. Filberts are wind-pollinated, so given the gusty conditions we've had for the last few days, my chances of finding a hazelnut or two this fall might be pretty good.

Horticulture In Action

Day 131: Emboldened by my success at producing one rooted slip of contorted filbert in my entire horticultural history with the tree using multiple methods over a period of five or six years, I set out this morning to determine whether the experiment was repeatable or only a fluke. Since soil layering had been the only means with which I'd had any luck, I made eight "staples" out of aluminum wire, tied flagger tape to them (it won't fade like the cloth strips did), and headed out into light drizzle with a trowel, a sharp knife, rooting hormone and assorted other pieces of gardening gear to tackle the project. I was able to find eight conveniently contorted bends in branches close to the ground, scraped wounds on the bottoms of each twig and dosed it with Rootone, then buried each one two to three inches deep, mounding dirt donated by the resident mole around each staple before packing it down. Now the project is in Ma Nature's hands. The timing is right. The sap is running. New growth has begun. Will I have to wait five years again to get results? If that's what it takes, I have the patience for the task.

Layered At Last!

Day 130: If western Washington records an 8.5 earthquake this afternoon, that was me upon discovering that my horticultural labours have finally been rewarded. Yes, that is a rooted slip of Harry Lauder's Walking Stick, Corylus avellana "Contorta," the fruit of a soil-layering attempt begun in 2016! It is the only one of ten to take root. Two years ago, I thought it felt like it was attached to the ground, but I didn't want to disturb it until it had had a chance to establish. I still wasn't completely convinced last year. Today when I checked on it, there was no doubt: it had formed a good root system and was ready to move to Phase Two, i.e., being transplanted to a sunken pot where it will remain for another year before being put in its permanent location. I believe this was one of the slips I treated with rooting hormone although the colour had faded entirely from the cloth strips I'd used as indicators of "treated" vs. "untreated." Given the difficulty I've had propagating Harry using every method known to man but grafting, I think it's safe to assume that this must have been one of the treated twigs. Soil layering, for those of you unfamiliar with the procedure, is done by burying a living twig in soil, leaving it attached to the parent plant until a root system forms. It is sometimes helpful to create a wound on the lower portion of the buried piece as I did in this instance. The wound stimulates a healing response. I am ecstatic! Now let's see if I can do it again.

Half-Baked Horticulture

Day 275: Contorted Filbert (aka Harry Lauder's Walking Stick, Corylus avellana "Contorta") is, according to numerous experts, an extremely difficult tree to propagate. Over the years, I've tried rooting it in water, heeling in (both using cuttings of new and old wood) and soil layering, but without success. I had considered grafting onto native Corylus stock, but this is not recommended because the parent stock is prone to suckering. Finally, I decided to go on line to see what those same experts could suggest, and found a consensus: air layering.

Okay, it's been many years since I air-layered anything (a leggy dieffenbachia, as I recall), so I went to YouTube for a refresher course. I could have pulled out a plant manual, but I was already sitting at the computer (I'm getting lazy these days) and I was curious to see if there had been any improvements made to the technique. The process is pretty basic. You strip a section of bark from a branch including a node in the section, scrape off all the cambium for an inch or so on either side of the node, treat the section with rooting hormone, pack wet peat or sphagnum around the wound and then seal it up in plastic wrap. Okay, got that. Nothing new there. However, one horticulturist recommended applying a layer of aluminum foil over the top of the plastic wrap to reflect the heat of summer sun. In the video's conclusion, he said, "And there you have it...baked potato on a stick."

Harry Lauder now sports three of the strangest fruits in my garden. It'll be a month or two before I can tell if this bit of half-baked horticulture will work.