Hazelnuts in Oregon (Mission, Beaver: park, area, island)

[sugarsugar]

I went a googling this and somewhere in the 80s, everyone started using the word hazelnut in place of filbert. Same thing I have seen with granite, ie every polished rock slab is called granite; for that matter, people also mix up sweet potatoes and yams. Anyway...

Oregon accounts for approx. 98-99% of the "hazelnuts" produced in the United States. And we produce 3-5% of the world crop, unless someone has some other figures to look at?

[YellowHorse]

Originally Posted by sugarsugar

I went a googling this and somewhere in the 80s, everyone started using the word hazelnut in place of filbert. Same thing I have seen with granite, ie every polished rock slab is called granite; for that matter, people also mix up sweet potatoes and yams. Anyway...

Oregon accounts for approx. 98-99% of the "hazelnuts" produced in the United States. And we produce 3-5% of the world crop, unless someone has some other figures to look at?

Oh, I love Filberts. Growing up in Oregon, I had almost unlimited availability.
When I moved down to California, I had to really search around to find them and are quite expensive.
Funny, when I first started looking for them I would ask if they had Filberts. Everyone would give me a blank stare and say, "who?" "Filberts, you know, little round nuts." They'd look at me like I was nuts. Finally, I would say, "also known as Hazelnuts" and they would go, "Oh, Hazelnuts!"
My husband still makes fun of me calling them Filberts. Though he never tried one until he met me. He likes them, says the taste reminds him of Coconut.

[oldtrader]

I went a googling this and somewhere in the 80s, everyone started using the word hazelnut in place of filbert. Same thing I have seen with granite, ie every polished rock slab is called granite; for that matter, people also mix up sweet potatoes and yams. Anyway...

As a native Californian I can tell you the word Hazelnut was around long before the 1980s. We had a lot of them around our ranch (wild) when I first came acquainted with them 50 years before that. Filberts became the name for Cultivated ones soon after that lead to them becoming popularr.

In fact the name filbert replacing hazelnut as the name increased sales. Just as a yellow apple called Bellflowers was changed to Yellow Delicious as the former name did not sell those apples but with the change of name they really started to sell.

As to yams, they are grown in Africa and are not what we call yams in this country. What we know as Yams and Sweet Potatos in the U.S. are both the same thing as red and yellow delicious are really close cousins in apples. The vegetable industry is currently starting a campaign to get rid of the name yams for them and call them all sweet potatoes which they think will increase sales. In other words, yellow and orange sweet potatoes, as red and yellow delicious helped increase the yellow apple sales.

[YellowHorse]

Both names are old, it's somewhat of a regional thing on what you call them.

You Say Filberts, I Say Hazelnuts-Any Way Delicious

[sugarsugar]

Originally Posted by oldtrader

As a native Californian I can tell you the word Hazelnut was around long before the 1980s. We had a lot of them around our ranch (wild) when I first came acquainted with them 50 years before that. Filberts became the name for Cultivated ones soon after that lead to them becoming popularr.

In fact the name filbert replacing hazelnut as the name increased sales. Just as a yellow apple called Bellflowers was changed to Yellow Delicious as the former name did not sell those apples but with the change of name they really started to sell.

As to yams, they are grown in Africa and are not what we call yams in this country. What we know as Yams and Sweet Potatos in the U.S. are both the same thing as red and yellow delicious are really close cousins in apples. The vegetable industry is currently starting a campaign to get rid of the name yams for them and call them all sweet potatoes which they think will increase sales. In other words, yellow and orange sweet potatoes, as red and yellow delicious helped increase the yellow apple sales.

No, hazelnut as a word isn't new, and that is what i ate wild as a child too. Calling what is a filbert a "hazelnut" is new and feels more like a marketing scheme to me. I rarely see filberts called filberts now!

The way I understood the yam/sweet potato deal is that they are two completely different things in real life. But what is typically sold in grocery stores as yams and sweet potatoes are in fact just different varieties of sweet potatoes. I think that is the same as what you are saying? I am not certain if I have ever had a true yam.

[sugarsugar]

Originally Posted by YellowHorse

Oh, I love Filberts. Growing up in Oregon, I had almost unlimited availability.
When I moved down to California, I had to really search around to find them and are quite expensive.
Funny, when I first started looking for them I would ask if they had Filberts. Everyone would give me a blank stare and say, "who?" "Filberts, you know, little round nuts." They'd look at me like I was nuts. Finally, I would say, "also known as Hazelnuts" and they would go, "Oh, Hazelnuts!"
My husband still makes fun of me calling them Filberts. Though he never tried one until he met me. He likes them, says the taste reminds him of Coconut.

Yes, exactly! The word hazelnut rules now, even here in Oregon It has been awhile since i checked, but iirc, I was a bit put off by the price of filbert/hazelnuts now days. I think I was just spoiled by how many I had access to eating for free as a kid.

Same thing with cherries - we had an old orchard on the place my folks bought, and there were dozens of varieties. I'd climb up to check for ripeness, sometimes fall, get up and do some more trees, cherry juice all over me. I ate them until I was sick, then ate more. Like a cherry addict! Heck, my cocker spaniel even ate them (he spit out the pits, it was funny to watch). Now I usually only see a couple of varieties in the stores, they are spendy and not always the best quality so I usually pass them up.

I'd love to be snacking on a big old plate full of filberts and a dozen different kind of cherries right now - that is like candy to me.

[Larry Caldwell]

Sherm's carries yams at times during the year, I think mostly around the holidays. They cut them into chunks because a whole yam is more than most people want to deal with. Like beets, they are tough to peel unless you heat the skin first.

[karlsch]

I happen to have the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM.

It says the word hazelnut dates back to the year 725: c 725 Corpus Gloss. 33 Abelena, haeselhnutu.

And filbert only back to 1292: 1292 Britton ii. xxiv. §1 Et as foiles, et as flours (v.r. e a philbers).

So I guess the word hazelnut came first.

[YellowHorse]

Yes, the word hazelnut came first, and they were also called cobnuts depending on the area of Europe. The word "filbert" was used to honor St. Philbert, a French saint. As the story goes, the day of St. Philbert's feast was in late August, which is also the peak of harvest time for hazelnuts. So people started applying the saint's name to the nuts that were in season on his feast day.

Here is the USA, the term filbert is regional, though growers often say they grow filberts and sell hazelnuts. But it seems the term filbert is falling out of favor in the regions it use to be popular. I have switched to using the term hazelnut here in California, but I do still use filbert when visiting family in Oregon.

[ukiyo-e]

Originally Posted by Steve Pickering

Correct. Filberts are Cultured and Wild are Hazelnut. Not to be confused with Witch Hazel.

When I was taking plant taxonomy as a botany minor we were taught that the filbert is a distinct species of hazel, found only in parts of Europe and the Middle East, which Wikipedia confirms:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corylus_maxima\

"The filbert is similar to the related common hazel, C. avellana, differing in having the nut more fully enclosed by the tubular involucre." An involucre is a series of bracts around the base of a flower; if you look at a lot of Asteraceae blooms you'll see some whorls of small green leaf-life structures around the base of the ray flowers, and those comprise the involucre.

I have no doubt, though, that since most people don't know beans about technical botany that many people use the term filbert incorrectly.