Hazelnut( Hazelnut) - a very valuable food product, sweet in taste, incredibly nutritious, wholesome. Common hazel is a deciduous shrub growing in many parts of the world, countries with a temperate climate. Cultivated varieties of hazel are called hazelnuts. Everyone loves hazelnuts. And with the growing number of people leading a healthy lifestyle, fitness lovers, eating hazelnuts has become more common. Useful properties of common hazel are used by folk and official medicine. Many doctors, healers even now recommend it to their patients.
- Where Hazel Grows
- Useful Properties of Hazel
- Medical Applications
Hazel was bred in Ancient Greece and Rome. It was grown Teofrast, Sophocles, Virgil. Later, from the 6th century, it came to Turkey, and then began to grow on our Black Sea coast. The selection of the shrubs was strict: they were taken with the most delicious, large, fine-grained fruits. The center of trade was - the Italian port of Avellan. Common hazel got its specific name "Avellan" here.
↑ to content ↑Where hazel grows
At present, hazel is a large shrub, less often a tree, up to 8 meters high, growing throughout the European part of Russia, cultivated in many countries of the world, found on the mountains of Crimea and the Caucasus at heights from 800up to 1600 m, sometimes rises to 2300 m above sea level. The area of thickets of common hazel is large. Only in the forests of state importance in Russia, it is about 14 thousand hectares. In addition, hazel is still growing with oak, forming a beautiful undergrowth on an area of approximately 2 million hectares.
The genus of hazel is represented by 20 species. It grows in the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor, Northern Iran, the middle and mountainous part of the Caucasus. This is a mighty tree with a straight trunk( height about 30 m), a wide pyramidal crown. It grows 200 years, a ripe tree gives 20 kg of small, thin-shelled, tasty, oily fruits. For beauty, power tree hazel can compete with beech. Two species of hazel grow in the Far East: Manchu and variegated, in the Caucasus and the Crimea - Lombard, or large, whose nuts are known as hazelnuts, in Transcaucasia - Pontic and Colchian.
Hazel is a shade-tolerant breed, but it fruits well where there is more sunlight, where the earth is more fertile, where there is more moisture. It grows mainly bushes. A large bush sometimes consists of 50 nuts, and there is not a single main one among them - they all stand with a slope in different directions.
In the steppe, wilderness occurs along forest edges, ravines, cliffs, rivers, streams. Its root system is powerful, distributed in the upper horizons. For the oak forest, it is an indispensable soil-protective underbrush. This is a very valuable shrub when creating ravine plantations. By giving natural cuts, hazel prevents soil washout or erosion.
White wood of a hazel has a pinkish shade, strong, viscous, it is well pricked, bends. Goes on hoops, poles, upholstery of fruit boxes, furniture. The coal obtained from it is used for the production of pencils, gunpowder. Young light chocolate stalks cut down on fishing rods: flexible, durable. Previously, erections were made of them, weaving beautiful baskets, making rakes and canes.
According to ancient belief, hazel branches possessed mystical, magical power: for example, an index of treasures was made from annual shoots. Moreover, they had to be cut off on a moonlit night on Ivan Kupala or on an early Sunday morning. And the Czechs took consecrated willow and three branches of hazel: one - to search for water under the ground, the other - gold, the third - silver. Marriage ceremonies could not do without the branches of hazel - they served as a symbol of fertility.
This is a fast-growing breed. Over the summer, its shoots are stretched to one and a half meters. Hazel has many breeding methods. If a young shoot is pinned to the ground, consider a new bush. It can be repotted next spring. She, like a currant, propagated by dividing the bushes. If in the autumn ripe nuts fall to the ground, in the spring wait for beautiful shoots. Another method of reproduction is grafting of cuttings on the roots of the bear nut. Fruiting occurs in the second year, and abundant - in the fourth.
I have both bushes in my country house - hazel and hazelnut. Both give a lot of shoots in the spring. Hazelnut bush more powerful. Of course, hazelnuts are larger, but, as it seems to me, the taste of hazelnut is richer.
↑ to the content ↑Useful properties of hazel
Hazelnut Nuts - a real delicacy. They can be eaten raw, toasted, dry. They make cakes, creams, various fillings, sweets, halvah, cream, butter, as well as flour, which does not lose its taste for two years. All diet products with its addition become tasty, high-calorie. The kernel of the nut contains 60% fat, 18% protein, up to 5% sucrose, also contains vitamins B and C, iron salts, trace elements. Nut yield - 50% of the total nut mass. By the calorie content of hazel nuts twice the white bread and meat. Walnut oil contains 65% oleic, 9% palmetic, 1% stearic acid. It also contains many vitamins. The beneficial properties of hazel is used in many industries. Walnut oil is used not only by cooks. It is used by painters, perfumers for the production of toilet soap, other cosmetics products, food, paint and varnish industry. Even the shell goes to the production of plywood, linoleum, briquette, grinding stones, activated carbon.
содерж to content ↑Medical use
Common hazel has long been used as a therapeutic drug. It has found application in medicine for a long time to relieve headaches, for rheumatic diseases, for diseases of the kidneys, urinary system, anemia, as a general strengthening. Hazel oil mixed with egg white treats burns.
From kernels of nuts it is possible to prepare anti-inflammatory milk, whose caloric content is twice as high as natural cow's. Crush the nuts with a coffee grinder, and better grind them thoroughly with a mortar. Fill with water for 8-10 hours. Water should slightly cover ground nuts. In the morning, it is not necessary to drain the water, but directly rub the nuts so that a nut porridge would turn out. Let the porridge mass infuse for 3-4 hours. Then it must be boiled, drain. Take 1 teaspoon 3-4 times a day. It helps nut milk with diseases of the upper respiratory tract, for example, bronchitis, at elevated temperatures. Traditional medicine advises taking nut milk for lactating mothers, especially when they have little milk.
Epilepsy is a very severe, insidious disease. A decoction of leaves, bark, hazel roots can alleviate the condition of such a patient. Harvested raw materials are crushed, as small as possible, placed in an enamel or glass dish. One part of the dry collection pour ten parts of cold water, mix. Place this dish in a water bath, bring water to a boil. Stand the dishes with the collection in boiling water for 20-30 minutes. Remove the finished decoction from heat, incubate for 12-15 minutes, filter. The volume of decoction, naturally decreased, therefore topped up with boiled water to the initial volume. During the day you need to drink 1 liter of broth. Every day, prepare a new daily rate of broth. Before taking the broth is slightly heated to body temperature. One liter of broth is divided into five parts - this is at one time( 200 ml).Take an hour after eating.
The leaves of hazel for health-improving purposes are harvested in late spring( May-June).They should be dried in the open air, not in the sun. Store in a dry place in paper or cloth bags or pouches. Shelf life - 3 years.
Hazel leaf tea has diuretic properties. It is curious that the same tea is very effective in incontinence. It will be useful for varicose veins, diseases of the lymphatic system, anemia, rickets. It is brewed in the same way as regular long leaf tea. & Gt;
Hazelnut oil has beneficial healing and healing properties. One dessert spoon of butter( 20 g) before bedtime will help with atherosclerosis. A teaspoon( 10-15 g), taken in the morning on an empty stomach, is useful for the prevention of diseases of the thyroid gland. Hazelnut oil tastes good, smells good. It can be bought without a prescription.
Hazel blooms - and are filled with jubilant, irresistible singing finches, everywhere they are echoed by blackbirds, belobrovniki. Bees rush here. The ovary of each female flower contains two ovules. But only one of them is destined to fertilize, so the nut contains one core. However, it happens that both ovules develop. Then two kernels take root under the shell. AmazingSuch nuts A.S.Pushkin found in the groves around Mikhailovsky, where he remained in exile for several years. For him, as for other people of that time, this phenomenon seemed mysterious, unusual. He even wrote such funny jokes:
"We are exactly a double nutlet under a single shell."
Once in the thickets of hazel, under the rough, broad, rounded leaves, you will see small “lamps” - clusters of nuts. Each nutlet, like a bulb, is covered with a corrugated, with an open-worked edge “bulb” - plyus.
They came up with many puzzles about the nutlet, but you won’t immediately understand what it is about:
Plant ordinary hazel in your country house - you will get great benefits and great satisfaction. Show attention to her, care - she will generously answer you with good!
