Читать книгу A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside - Johnny Scott - Страница 54

The importance of hazel trees to our ancestors cannot be overestimated. Hazels grow throughout Britain except on very poor or waterlogged ground and are the most prolific tree or shrub to cultivate beneath the canopy of other woodland trees, particularly oak and ash. They grow most frequently in the form of a multi-stemmed bush of slender trunks, and the pliable rods and whips, which can be bent, twisted, woven and even knotted, provided Mesolithic nomads with the materials to make their fishing creels, baskets, hoops to spread skins over for shelter and an infinity of other uses. As communities became settled and early man discovered coppicing, hazel rods were split and woven into wattle hurdles for fencing or as panelling for house walls when daubed with clay. Hazel leaves, which are usually the earliest to appear in spring and often the last to fall in autumn, were fed to cattle as fodder. Hazel catkins, which appear in February, are among the first plant food for bees – an important consideration for the mead-dependent Bronze or Iron Age man – and the autumn crop of hazelnuts provided a plentiful and easily stored source of protein.

The significance of hazel is reflected in the wands and nuts found in virtually every Neolithic, Bronze Age or Iron Age burial site across Britain. Hazel nuts also appear to have been among the votive offerings at holy wells; during the excavations of an Iron Age well shaft at Ashill in Norfolk, quantities of hazel nuts were among the artefacts discovered within the walls of the shaft.