Encouraging beaked hazelnut to produce fruit

Hi, I'm wondering if anyone has any knowledge or experience with tending to wild hazelnuts to encourage them to produce more fruit e.g. pruning etc.  I find large thickets of them, sun and shade, but rarely see any fruit (including unripe).  Thanks:)
~Z

I have a somewhat similar situation. The beaked hazelnuts on a defined margin seem to produce nuts. Those in the middle of a brush area don't. The margin can be the edge of a lawn or the edge of a long driveway.

It doesn't matter much at this point: the squirrels and birds take most of them. Though I keep it in my mind, should hard times arise. Under those conditions, the squirrels will have competition -- and a new predator.

Where I live, there’s a short window of time to collect beaked hazelnut, around August 1. After that time, you won’t see anything left on the bushes because wildlife picks them clean. Is it possible they are producing but animals beat you to them?

Hi thanks for the responses. It’s totally possible that I’m just not getting to them before the animals do. Not seeing a ton of unripe fruit either though.

Still, how did indigenous people gather them in abundance in the past. It’s not like there weren’t other animals eating hazelnuts back then. I find it perplexing. That’s partially why I’m leaning towards some kind of tending, but maybe there are other larger environmental factors that I’m not aware of coming into play.

If your wild patch is well-established and hasn’t been subjected to disturbance that would prompt new growth, you may be dealing with a predominance of mature stalks (15+ years) that are unproductive. Thinking of the gang-busters beaked hazelnut patches I know of, they have been hit with trail-breaking or land clearing for nearby construction. This is beneficial because young stems (that shoot up from the surviving underground parts when aerial parts die back) are more productive.

So historically, at least around Lake Superior, we used cyclical fire to regenerate wild food plant populations. That’s usually associated with berries, or with maintaining clearings in general, but it works for hazelnuts too. You don’t need to do it that way, though. If these are on your land or land where you can manage them, you can selectively cut stems down to the ground to encourage new growth.

Hey there Marisa. Thank you for your response. Super interesting and fire is something I’ve been wondering about as I know it to be really important for a lot of berries like you said as well as certain types of ferns and many other things.

Marisa Lee wrote:If your wild patch is well-established and hasn’t been subjected to disturbance that would prompt new growth, you may be dealing with a predominance of mature stalks (15+ years) that are unproductive. Thinking of the gang-busters beaked hazelnut patches I know of, they have been hit with trail-breaking or land clearing for nearby construction. This is beneficial because young stems (that shoot up from the surviving underground parts when aerial parts die back) are more productive.

So historically, at least around Lake Superior, we used cyclical fire to regenerate wild food plant populations. That’s usually associated with berries, or with maintaining clearings in general, but it works for hazelnuts too. You don’t need to do it that way, though. If these are on your land or land where you can manage them, you can selectively cut stems down to the ground to encourage new growth.

Marisa Lee wrote:So historically, at least around Lake Superior, we used cyclical fire to regenerate wild food plant populations. That’s usually associated with berries, or with maintaining clearings in general, but it works for hazelnuts too. You don’t need to do it that way, though. If these are on your land or land where you can manage them, you can selectively cut stems down to the ground to encourage new growth.

Excellent comments! That meshes with what I have observed.

I don't have anything specific to add to this thread, but wanted to relay a web-site that my sister noted to me recently which may  be of use for those in the upper Midwest/northern Plains states in the U.S.:

https://www.midwesthazelnuts.org/