MR. GERARDI: That's true, I will admit your hybrids are a little later blooming, because your American hazel nuts around our place bloom very early, sometimes in January in full bloom.
MR. SLATE: C. avellana starts blooming in March and blooms for about a month. Some years when you have had considerable open weather, they have bloomed as early as the middle of February. They will, of course, stand considerable freezing when they are in bloom.
As regards the pollination, I believe about all the information we have is the work that was done at the Oregon Experiment Station a number of years ago. All of the varieties tried were self-unfruitful or self-incompatible. The term, "self-sterile" is often used, but I think it is a little more exact to say self-unfruitful or self-incompatible. They are not sterile, because the pistillate flowers are normal and so is the pollen produced by the staminate flowers. It's just a question of inability of the pollen to fertilize the pistillate flowers on the same variety.
We know nothing about the pollination requirements of any of these Corylus avellana or Corylus americana hybrids. We do know that when the cross is made that the Corylus americana variety must be the seed-parent. The cross doesn't work the other way around. That's about all we know about the cross-pollination of these filberts.
MR. SAWYER: We have had them to bloom in April or the first week in May.
MR. SLATE: The seedlings?
MR. SAWYER: The seedlings.
MR. SLATE: What is the origin of the seedlings?
MR. SAWYER: They are the natives.
MR. SLATE: The native C. rostrata, or C. cornuta to some botanists, it seems to me has nothing that we want in the way of a nut, if we can possibly grow these other varieties, the americana selections or the hybrids. It's a miserable little nut with that long, prickly husk. It's very difficult to get the nut out of it. For that reason, I have never been very much interested in it.