AM BRATACH: Raasay’s Community Newsletter April 2017 9 Hazel In the thirteenth of a series of articles on Raasay’s flora, botanist STEPHEN BUNGARD takes a look at Hazel. Hazel (Corylus avellana) is locally plentiful as a native plant on Raasay, especially near the coast. It has also been planted as part of tree-planting schemes. The male flowers are familiar as catkins but the very small red female flowers need to be looked for carefully. They are both found on the same plant, but it does not self- Hazel Gloves Photo: R. Cottis pollinate. Atlantic hazelwood in western Scotland is a unique, species-rich habitat that is the subject of a 2012 publication “Atlantic Hazel – Scotland’s Special Woodlands”, a book that features three images of the woodland at South Screapadal. Amongst other things the book dispels several myths about hazel: • Hazel occurs naturally as an understorey shrub • Multi-stemmed hazel is all hazel coppice • Hazel will die out if it is not regularly coppiced • Hazel will develop into a single-trunked tree if left uncoppiced None of these statements is true, especially of Atlantic hazel. Coppicing selected stems rather than completely cutting whole stools of hazel has long been used to provide straight sticks and firewood. The nuts are of course edible and plentiful in some years. The nuts are a major source of food for wood mice and voles as inspection of the nutshells lying on the ground will reveal. Several galls caused by midges and mites in the leaf, catkin and bud are known. On Skye the rare Hazel Gloves fungus (Hypocreopsis rhododendri) is known in several places, but it is not (yet) known on Raasay. It is so called because its orange-brown, radiating lobes can be redolent of rubber gloves. Glue fungus (Hymenochaete corrugata) is more common and accounts for dead hazel twigs glued at odd angles to other parts of the shrub. Pollen evidence suggests that hazel arrived in Scotland about 11,000 years ago and the woodlands it forms are part of the globally uncommon coastal temperate rainforest. “Atlantic hazelwoods are some of Scotland’s most ancient woodlands. They are older by far than the Atlantic oakwoods of Scotland and older than some of the Caledonian pinewoods.” This is something precious of which we on Raasay have a part. Stephen is Vice-county Recorder for the Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland for Skye, Raasay and the Small Isles. His website, including Flora of Raasay, can be found at tinyurl.com/Raasayflora OR bit.ly/Raasay, and Ancient Hazelwood at Screapadal Photo D. his botanical blog can be found at Genney. Inset: Female flower by H. Dekker www.skyeraasayplants.wordpress.com .