Asian beaked hazel is an East Asian shrub and the counterpart of America's beaked hazelnut: its small nuts sit inside bristly s drawn out into a long beak. It grows wild in Japan, Korea, northeastern China, and the Russian Far East; it is not native to the U.S., where it is grown mainly in arboreta and for hazelnut breeding.
Appearance
- Growth form
- A multi-stemmed deciduous shrub reaching up to about 20 ft (6 m).
- Leaves
- Leaves are about 2.5–5 in (6–12 cm) long with a rounded or slightly heart-shaped base and double-toothed edges. Young leaves in full sun can show a purplish central blotch.
- Flowers
- Hanging male open in early spring before the leaves; the tiny female flowers show only red stigmas.
- Fruit
- Nuts about 1/2 in (1.2 cm) long, in clusters of one to four, each wrapped in a bristly beaked husk. They ripen later in fall than American beaked hazelnut.
Look-alikes
Beaked hazelnutCorylus cornuta
Asian beaked hazel often has slightly larger, more distinctly lobed leaves on longer stalks, and its nuts ripen later in fall.
Why they get mixed upBoth have the same bristly, elephant's-trunk-style husk around the nut.
Where it lives
- Typical habitats
- Mountain forests
- Thickets
- Range
- Native to Japan, Korea, northeastern China (Manchuria and Inner Mongolia), and southeastern Siberia. In the U.S. it grows only in collections, such as the Dawes Arboretum (Ohio), Longwood Gardens and the Morris Arboretum (Pennsylvania), and the USDA hazelnut collection in Corvallis, Oregon.
- Preferred conditions
- One of the hardiest hazels: the northern variety is rated to USDA zone 3, the typical variety to zone 5.
Growing it
- Care
- It resists eastern filbert blight well and has been used in trials to breed disease-resistant hazelnuts, but its small, tightly husked nuts are not grown commercially.
Name and classification
- About the name
- The species includes two varieties: var. sieboldiana, with a husk only slightly longer than the nut, and the more widespread var. mandshurica, with a husk two to three times the nut's length.
Conservation
- IUCN Red List
- LCLeast ConcernLow risk of extinction
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