Description: A tall, broad bush, sometimes from a short bole.

Height: 5-7 m, shrubby, sometimes to 12m as a canopy tree.

Diameter: 10-20 cm

Leaves: Alternate, to 10 × 10 cm, orbicular or obovate, cordate base, sharp, triangular, unequal teeth; harshly hairy, deep green above, softly white-haired on veins beneath. Petiole stout, densely glandular-pubescent, 1.5 cm.

Shoots: Pale brown, covered in long, stiff hairs with swollen tips ("glandular"). Bud ovoid, smooth.

Bark: Shiny grey-brown, soon raised in small curling strips.

Flowers: Male catkins brownish-yellow in autumn, opening pale yellow, to 5 cm long, in December to late April in different years and places, mostly mid-February. Female flowers brown ovoids 3-5 mm with bright deep red styles exserted 2 mm a few days after pollen of same tree is shed.

Fruit: Nuts, 1-4 together, compressed ovoid, 1.5-2 cm long, whitish green ripening pale pink-brown, in green involucre of two bracts overlapped, 1cm long with teeth 3-5mm deep, sparse long white hairs.

Habitat: Mixed broad-leaved woodlands, up to 1200m, on many subsoils, though preferring chalky, fertile, deep soil.

Range: Virtually throughout Europe except inland Scandinavia, Southern Iberia and Balkans, east to Caucasus. In Britain, native to all parts except the Shetlands, and a major component of the natural woodland in many areas.

The nuts are edible and rich in oil, though the variety usually found in cultivation in Britain is Corylus maxima, or Cobnut. The tree is often regarded as an understory shrub, but does not flower and fruit without sunlight, so is really a canopy tree of woodland edge and clearings.

Information: Mitchell (1988), MacDonald (1984)

Source: A number of established trees in Eurostrip.

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