Hazel - Plant Identification, Uses and Folklore

I've talked to dozens and dozens of people over the years who are really into the survival and the bushcraft. You know, you ask them to build a trap, they could build a trap, they could build a shelter anywhere out of pretty much anything that's there. But when it comes to plant ID and the uses of plants and really ancient knowledge that's been passed down about particular plants, we're pretty much all left scratching our heads. There's not that much knowledge out there. So what I'm hoping to do with this series is do the research. Get out there, find the plants, ID them, relay what the uses are and were back in the past, and also bring a little bit of the folklore and possible magical uses surrounding those particular plants into these videos. I hope you enjoy them as much as I'm going to enjoy making them. Hello there, in this episode we're going to be taking a look at the hazel. Now I can never make up my mind as to whether hazel is a shrub, a tree, or a bush. I think it depends on how it's managed and how high it gets. Now you do find them in a range of sizes in the same area because they produce nuts. Squirrels take the nuts, bury them, forget where they've left them and they grow. So you get like a succession of plants growing year on year on year. Now there's different variations of the hazel tree or bush or shrub, but all the nuts on them are edible. The nuts are called hazelnuts, surprisingly, and they're very, very nice. Nice, but in the UK, With the amount of grey squirrels we have it's getting very very difficult in some areas to go foraging for the nuts that grow on these because the squirrels absolutely strip them just before they're ready to eat. Now I'm not a fan of grey squirrels and in areas where they're well controlled you can still get decent crops of hazelnuts. So as far as the plant ID goes I'll just give you a close-up of the leaves and also a close-up of the bark as well. It's usually very very smooth. But in some areas it does get rough because it's a favourite plant for deer to rub their antlers on. This is what it looks like when a deer has rubbed its antlers. Now unfortunately I'm in a woodland that isn't managed, it's just ancient woodland, very very wild. I'm pretty much the only one who ever comes through here. So these trees never get coppiced. Now the way to coppice a hazel tree is just to cut it off almost at ground level. Wait two, three, four years depending on how quickly it's grown and it'll put up loads of very straight stems. Even without it being coppiced a few of these are quite straight but I'll put a picture on now of a one that has been coppiced. Notice the difference. So because of the way that hazel grows lovely and straight and because of the way it bends when it's alive it's very very good for weaving, for basket making. There you go look how bendy that is. Absolutely amazing. you know you can practically tie this stuff in knots and it's extremely strong it's very nice to work with quite similar to willow so if you're out in the sticks and you need to make a fish trap this would be a very good alternative to willow if you want to see how to make a willow fish trap just click a link in the video description because i've got a video where i run through how to make one you don't have willow to hand you can substitute that for hazel remember back in the day when i was doing a lot of trapping I used to use hazel because it was nice and bendy, I'd bend it down, obviously I'd cut that off there, tie my string on here, do like a toggle release and have a spring snare trap. But back in the day it would have had a lot more uses, it would have been a very very important plant this one. Now some of the myths, legends and lore that are involved with hazel include the following. Because it's nice and straight, it's often used for magic wands and also the So the forked branches, where it goes up and forks off, were used by diviners to find water underground. Legend has it that if you make a crown by weaving hazel together, put it on your head and wish very hard your dreams will come true. And also protection was quite a thing as well because it was classed as a magical plant. If you put hazel twigs on your windowsills it's meant to protect you from lightning and if you wanted to protect yourself you'd take your hazel staff, draw a circle around yourself and that would create a magic circle. Protecting you from whatever it is that was trying to get you. Here's an example of what happens when you don't coppice your hazel. It basically just turns into a multi-limbed tree. This one's pretty high, probably 30 or 35 feet. And if you want nuts off that one, you've got to do some climbing. Could really do with coppicing a lot of these, getting them under control. But I ain't got the time. Now you can see from this one, that really, really tall one, that you've got some pretty viable firewood here. So I would imagine back in the day, When most hazels would have been coppiced, they would have left a few to get as big as this because that's very, very convenient firewood. I'm sure back in the day when I just had little axes and little saws, they would much prefer cutting down something like this than tackling a big oak. Got to be easier. Very nice plant hazel and probably one of my favourites of the ancient woodland. Now I've never tried divining for anything but I know someone who can do it and he is actually asked by a lot of farmers to go out and find deep wells or hidden water courses and he basically just goes out with a Y-shaped stick, walks along the field, stick goes down and he finds what he's looking for. Now I know a few areas on the hillside behind my house where there's underwater pipes because I've laid them I actually tapped four or five different springs along the bank side and I've run that into my big pond so I know exactly where the water flows underground. I'm going to walk over there, Putting a bit of tension on this fella, see if it does anything, see if I can feel anything when I'm over where the water is under the ground. I'd like to think it would work and I will give you an honest opinion. I don't know whether you can see that oak tree just at the end of my hand there. There's two or three springs come out the ground there and we tap those into a four inch perforated land drain and we've piped it all the way down here so the ground either side of that should have no water in it at all and running straight through here right through next to the camera should be a signal that my stick will pick up hopefully. If I hold it palms up it allows it to pivot in the palm of my hand. Just put a little bit of pressure on. With my little fingers, just to keep it out. Hopefully, something will happen. You're going to have to get a close-up on this, because that is as weird as the night is long. When I'm holding it like that, walking along, when I go over the area where I know there's water, I can feel it wanting to pull itself down. This stick wants to point towards the ground. So I'm going to do it with my eyes shut, and I'm going to bring the camera in a little bit closer, hopefully get a clearer picture of what's going on. I'm going to walk up the hill, See if this goes off at the right place. I might have actually put that stick slightly wrong but a foot or two either way and I'll call that a result. That's not far off. From about here I could feel it wanting to pull itself down to the ground. Try again but I'll go backwards so I know this area is dry and where the stick is is roughly where my pipe is so I'm going to walk backwards this time. Pretty amazing. I stopped it from going all the way down but it just felt like it wanted to fall out of my hand. It almost felt like... Felt like there was somebody just pulling it like that. So really, this fella that I've cut from the hazel tree, because it found water underground, is this actually a magical wand or is there something else at work here? It's something that I don't quite understand, but it certainly intrigues me very, very much. So that's the hazel. That's the ID, the uses and some of the lore surrounding this particular plant. But if you've got any more information to add, by all means, please put it in the comments. Thanks very much for watching. I shall see you next time.