California Hazelnut 



245 



III. CAtlFORNIA HAZELNUT 



GENUS CORYLUS [TOURNEFORT] LINN^US 

 Species Coiylus californica (A. de Candolle) Rose 

 Corylus rostrata var. californica A. de Candolle 



HIS is an under shrub or small tree of wooded hillsides, from middle 

 California northward through Oregon to Washington, attaining a 

 height of 12 meters, with a trunk diameter of 2.5 dm. 



The twigs are slender and round, with long, often glandular hairs, 

 but become nearly smooth with age and red-brown or dark gray. The buds are 

 small, blunt, and covered with densely hairy scales. The leaves are alternate, 

 firm, broadly ovate to nearly orbicular, 2.5 to 7 cm. long, sharp or shghtly taper- 

 pointed, heart-shaped or rounded at the base, incised and toothed or doubly 

 toothed on the margin, dark green, rough, and somewhat hairy above, paler and 

 softly hairy beneath, the venation prominent on both surfaces; leaf-stalk slender, 

 very hairy, 6 to 8 mm. long. The flowers are monoecious, the staminate on twigs 

 of the previous season in cylindric drooping very haiiy-scaled catkins, 3 to 4 cm. 

 long; the 4 to 8 stamens are inserted on 

 a hairy receptacle with 2 bracts, the fila- 

 ments short, 2-forked, each with a hairy- 

 tipped anther-sac. The pistillate flowers 

 are borne on short branchlets of the sea- 

 son's growth, in short, erect clusters, each 

 bract protecting an incompletely 2-celled 

 ovary joined to the calyx; the 2 styles 

 are short, erect, supporting a slender 

 stigma; the 2 bractlets unite and grow 

 into a short, tubular beaked, bristly in- 

 volucre enclosing the fruit, which is an 

 ovoid nut, about 1.5 cm. in diameter, with 

 a thick, hard bony dark brown shell, en- 

 closing a sweet oily edible seed. It dif- 

 ers from the Beaked hazelnut, Corylus 



rostrata Aiton, a common northern shrub, « r^^^NAlCKOvi^ T 

 which at the north extends almost across 

 the continent, in its shorter beak, more 

 prominently ribbed and much less bristly 

 involucre, and blunter leaves, which like the twigs are much more hairy. 



The wood of the California hazelnut is hard, close-grained, and brown; it takes 

 a fine polish and is used on the Pacific slope for shoe-pegs, basketry, and barrel 

 hoops; coarse brooms were made of the branches by the pioneers. The nut is 

 gathered for food as are other hazelnuts. 



Fig. 201. — California Hazelnut. 



