Corylus avellana the hedgerow Hazel is one of the few trees that most folks can recognise - I think the catkins have something to do with that, no other tree quite matches the dangliness of those 
precocious, yellow lambstails. Hazel was certainly the first tree I learned about; as kids we used it for making 'camps', dutch arrows, Bows, fishing rods, walking sticks, spears, the list is along one. It's a very friendly wood for youngsters armed only with a penknife and enthusiasm. It works easily, has no thorns, or staining sap and is both pliant and splitable...perfect for whittling
Have you noticed how often Hazel crops up in the Ray Mears wild food series? - our ancestors must have used it in much the way I did with my band of chums. It's fewer than a hundred years since Hazel was more-or-less abandoned as a useful material - as a consquence the Hazel woods where harvesting once took
place still exist, there are thousands of acres now mostly in a sad state and in need of TLC. Hazel needs to be coppiced on a regular cycle for the material to be of a good quality, once it gets old and gnarly it has to be cut, cleared (or stacked) and then allowed to re-grow for a dozen years or so by which time most of the new growth will be useable.
I find it hard to express my frustration and bewilderment at the lack of recognition that Hazel coppice has beyonds the realms of a few Craftsmen and the County Wildlife Trusts. What a wonderful, renewable resource!
Plastics derived from valuable oil and coal have usurped part of the role of Hazel and nasty panel fences made from cheap softwood impregnated with Copper-Chrome-Arsanate have taken the place of the Hazel hurdle. Shepherds stopped using hurdles a long while ago when metal took over, and now, poly tunnels give protection at lambing time.
What really bugs me is that we import tons of plant supports, brooms and trellises from Taiwan, the Phillipines and China when we have a far better material on our own shores that NEEDS to be used. It's so mind bogglingly stupid, what will future generations think!
How do we get the message across to gardeners that the cheapo Besom
they buy in the Garden
Centre is a fake - it's a bundle of dried up
palm flowers, or bamboo strips, or maybe ripped off heather from some
wild place......not a well crafted broom made from selected birch twigs
tightly bound and fitted with a hand shaped Hazel shaft. Besoms are worth a whole article (to follow).
OK, a hand made British besom may cost five times as much as an
imported one but cared for it'll last for 10 years at least and as it
wears so it's character 
changes. If you get to meet
the maker of your Besom so much the better, look out for woodland fairs around the country
- they nearly always have a Broom Squire in residence.
Faggots, Spars, Trugs, Charcoal, Hazel Nuts, Dormice, Bluebells - what a list of wonderful things entwined in the Hazel story - you haven't heard the last of this one!
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