hes which were growing
on the place. Crosses included pollen of the Barcelona, Duchilly, Red
Aveline, White Aveline, Purple Aveline, the Italian Red, Daviana and
several hybrids between other filberts and hazels. By 1945 the number of
these plants were in the neighborhood of 2000 and by 1952 considerable
knowledge had been gained as to the hardiness, blight resistance to the
common hazel blight (known scientifically as cryptosporella anomala),
freedom from the curculio of the hazelnuts (commonly known as the hazel
weevil) and resistance to other insect pests. Also, considerable data
had been accumulated by cataloging over 650 trees each year for five
years; cataloging included varied and detailed studies of their growth,
bearing habits, ability to resist blight, curculio and other insects,
the size of the nut, the thinness of the shell and the flavor of the
kernel. Several books of all this detail were accumulated in trying to
nail down several commercial varieties that would be propagated from
this vast amount of material. Although some bushes produced good nuts at
the rate of as much as two tons to the acre, measured on the basis of
space that they took up in the test orchard, the most prolific kind
seemed to be the ones that had a tendency to revert to the wild hazel
type. The better and thinner-shelled types, more resembling the
filberts, seemed to be shy bearers so that there being a host of new
plants to catalog (more than 1000) which had not indicated their bearing
characteristics, we included these among the possible ideal plants we
were seeking. Although there were several plants that could be
considered commercial in the original group of over 650 it has been
thought that the waiting of a few more years to ascertain whether there
would be something better in the next 1000 plants to bear that would be
worthwhile waiting for and no attempt has been made to propagate the
earlier tested plants. Some of these 650 tested hybrids proved to have
nuts that were classed as Giants being much larger than the filberts
produced by male or pollen parent such as the Barcelona, Duchilly or
Daviana, and several times the size of the nuts of the female parent
which was the wild hazel.

[Illustration: _Wild Wisconsin Hazel discovered on Hazel Hills Farm near
River Falls. Note size of nuts in husks as compared to woman's hand.
This plant became the female parent in over 1,000 crosses by pollen
furnished from male blooms of Duchill