On the Wildside: Hazel catkins signal change in the seasons

One of our most widespread and significant trees, hazel is strong symbol of the new year to come. In times past, the hazel was important to our forebears. It naturally self-coppices with stems springing up from the base, an ability used as woodland owners deliberately coppiced trees and shrubs to generate poles of hazelwood for making handles for small tools, wood for charcoal or fuelwood, and in earlier times for wattle and daub used in basically-constructed cottages.

Many of our region’s ancient woodlands were grown with mostly oak and hazel coppice to help fuel the burgeoning industrial revolution, specifically our iron and steel industries. The last traditionally cut hazel coppice I know of was by the local farmers in the Gleadless Valley, probably in the 1950s in Cat Lane Woods. Unlike some coppices from medieval and early industrial times, with all stems cut to the base at one time, these trees seem to be harvested on a ‘cut-and-come-again’ basis.

This was a system commonly used with hazel in the western ‘Atlantic hazelwoods’ where you took stems of different ages and sizes according to whatever use you had in mind. Even today I know of gardeners and allotment holders who cut the young, thin, re-grown stems as pea-sticks, perhaps the last usage that resonates with the past.

The other use and value of these prolific hazelwoods for local people was in the production of hazelnuts. These were both an important food-source and a worthwhile economic output, but also sources of problems and trouble.

Across the countryside there were issues in the autumn when local people went ‘nutting’ throughout local woods, and this seems to have mixed rowdy behaviour and probably a deal of alcoholic beverage. The resulting disruption and damage led to regional landowners taking action to prevent this, from prosecutions or even the blanket removal of hazel from the woods.

Professor Ian D. Rotherham, researcher, writer & broadcaster on wildlife & environmental issues, is contactable on [email protected]; follow Ian’s blog (https://ianswalkonthewildside.wordpress.com/) and Twitter @IanThewildside