Cosford Hazelnut / Filbert Trees

Corylus maxima: Bareroot Cosford Hazelnut Trees in Standard Sizes

Cosford is a "quality over quantity" variety, probably the most widely cultivated Filbert type hazelnut (after the wild varieties, which are also used for hedging). Filbert nuts all have a long, decorative husk, and these also have a relatively easy to crack shell.
Hazels have nice Autumn colour and pretty catkins (yellow in this case) on the branches in winter, which open around February as an early food source for bees.

Browse our variety of nut trees, our range of fruit trees, or ornamental garden trees.

Delivery season: Hazelnut trees are delivered bareroot during late autumn and winter, approximately November-March inclusive.
Choosing a size: Small trees are cheaper, easier to handle and more forgiving of less than ideal aftercare, so they are best for a big planting project. If instant impact is your priority, or if you are only buying a few plants for use in a place where it is convenient to water them well in their first year, then you may as well use bigger ones. All our bareroot trees are measured by their height in centimetres above the ground (the roots aren't measured).

Features:

• Height: To 4m
• Soil: Any well drained, light and quite sandy is best
• Yellow catkins on the branches in winter
• Harvest: September
• Bareroot delivery only: November-March
  

Growing Cosford Hazelnuts

Any well drained soil. Crops best in full sun or light shade on quite light soil with moderate fertility, as too much fertility encourages vegetative growth. Suitable for large containers designed for trees.

Hazelnuts can be eaten when they are still green, or stored to dry and turn brown for the best flavour.

In practice, Hazel is usually not self fertile and requires a pollination partner, because the male catkins and female flowers on a given plant tend to open at different times.
It is such a common tree and hedge plant in the UK that there is almost always a local partner for your tree, but to ensure full pollination you can use any other hazelnut: we recommend the lovely purple cobnut. Cosford itself is an excellent pollinator for other varieties.

Did You Know?

First recorded in 1816, it is named after the Cosford Hundred in Suffolk, which is a historical subdivision of a county, centred around Hadleigh in this case.