2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
Corilus (lat. Corylus) - a spectacular shrub from the Birch family. Other names are hazel or hazel.
Description
Corilus is a shrub whose height, as well as the diameter of its crowns, can reach three meters. The bark of these shrubs is usually light, pleasant brownish-gray shades, and in young shoots, it most often has a delicate olive brown color. The branches of the corilus are bizarrely curving along their entire length, and the length of its wide-rounded leaves, equipped with jagged edges, ranges from four to six centimeters.
During flowering, leafless twigs of corilus are covered with spectacular inflorescences-earrings of reddish shades - such earrings are formed exclusively by pistillate female flowers. As for the earrings with male staminate flowers, they are characterized by a rich lemon-yellow color and appear somewhat later.
Corilus fruits have the appearance of single-seeded nuts equipped with very dense shells, surrounded by green leaf-shaped fruit wraps, formed in turn by overgrown bracts. Sometimes these nuts can be located singly, but most often they are crowded, gathering in small "piles", each of which includes from two to five pieces.
The total lifespan of a Corilus usually ranges from sixty to eighty years, however, the age of some specimens can go up to a hundred years!
Where grows
Corilus is good because it is cultivated quite successfully almost everywhere. And on the territory of Russia, this plant can most often be seen both in the form of an underbrush in coniferous, mixed and deciduous forests, and on the edges or clearings.
Usage
Corilus shoots are actively used in floristry. Especially often this plant, characterized by an active and intricately curved form of growth, is used to create all sorts of large-scale compositions. The whimsical lines created by its branches make it possible to easily fit almost any arrangement even into the most stylish and modern interior design, organically complementing it with original touches. In small quantities, twigs of corilus in the composition of the arrangements make it easy to give the entire composition as a whole the effect of graphicality and even a certain gracefulness. And if there are a lot of branches, they can become an excellent frame even for the most intricate compositions - due to its wood structure, this material can boast of extraordinary durability and strength! By the way, it will not lose its qualities, even when it dries up! If you put the corilus in water, then after some time, buds will begin to bloom on the branches!
Corilus fruits are quite actively used for food, and its wood is an excellent material for small turning and joinery.
Growing and caring
Corilus is very picky about the richness and composition of soils - it will grow best on rich soils with high or moderate moisture content with lime content. In addition, this plant feels great on loose and deep brown mountain soils, on damp forest soils of oak forests, on chernozems (both ordinary and degraded), on alluvial soils located in the valleys of streams and rivers, as well as on rich podzolic soils. … But on swampy sphagnum-peat soils and on poor sandy soils, it will no longer be possible to meet corilus!
As for reproduction, the corilus boasts an exceptional ability to reproduce by root suckers, as a result of which it begins to occupy forest clearings with a truly lightning speed - which is why it is considered a rather aggressive weed in forestry. In addition, corilus reproduces very well also by pneumatic shoots.
