Roland’s Ramblings: Nuts in May?

by Roland Hughes
30th December 2020

When I was thinking over the subject and hunting for a title for this ramble the ‘Gathering nuts in May’ nursery rhyme came into my head – not what you would consider the most sensible time to collect a fruit which probably is no more than a bud at that time of year. So, I asked ‘Google’ about the rhyme and discovered that the words and meaning have probably slipped a little with time and translation.

Unripe hazelnuts

The rhyme or chant (as it is a team game) in full:

Here we go gathering nuts in May,
Nuts in May, nuts in May,
Here we go gathering nuts in May,
On a cold and frosty morning.

Who will you have for nuts in May,
Nuts in May, nuts in May,

Who will you have for nuts in May,
On a cold and frosty morning.

We’ll have Jamie for nuts in May,
Nuts in May, nuts in May,
We’ll have Jamie for nuts in May,
On a cold and frosty morning.

Who will you have to fetch him away,
Fetch him away, fetch him away,
Who will you have to fetch him away,
On a cold and frosty morning.

We’ll have Jackie to fetch him away,

Fetch him away, fetch him away,
We’ll have Jackie to fetch him away,
On a cold and frosty morning.
On a cold and frosty morning.
On a cold and frosty morning.

White hawthorn blossom in late May
Pink hawthorn blossom

The suggestion is that the original wording is “knots (flower posies) of may” (thorn blossom) and refers the game to former May Day ceremonies, which took place early in the morning, so that’s the ‘cold and frosty’ part. The alternative lines “On a fine summer’s morning” and “So early in the morning”, and “On a May morning early” are used in other versions.

[Editor’s note: washing one’s face in the dew of May Day morning is traditionally supposed to bestow beauty!]

A lady called Alice Gomme collected and wrote about various games and songs in her book The Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland (1894-8) and used earlier references such as G. F. Northall’s English Folk-rhymes; (1882) to come to this conclusion.

(In the rhyme; ‘Jamie’ and ‘Jackie’ can be substituted for whoever the chosen person is in this springtime ‘fertility rite’ game involving much skipping forwards and backwards and a bit of a wrestle.)

‘Myth’ busted, or tidied up a bit at least anyway. One of the things that led me here was the discovery of chewed up hazelnuts in July.

Hazel on an Iron Age fort at Mistleberry Wood (via Pribdean Wood)

I’ve wondered about hazelnuts before – why do you not find lots of ‘baby’ hazel trees growing when there are so many mature (and ‘over mature’) hazels in our countryside in hedgerows or coppice woodlands? With so many trees, even if cut for coppice on a short rotation (explain later), surely there would be sufficient plants old enough to produce enough nuts to allow enough to ripen, and out of those, enough to fall, not be eaten, germinate and sprout new plants?

Hazel coppice with oak standards at Mistleberry Wood

Hazel (Corylus avellana) has grown happily in this country since the ice sheets started to retreat around 20,000 years ago and hazelnuts have been part of the human diet for almost as long, possibly being ground up and used long before wheat became popular. Cobnuts, incidentally, are the ‘cultivated’ form of the hazel grown in orchards, commonly in Kent and the South East, and are slightly larger than the ‘wild’ form. Filberts are yet another name for this versatile species, said to originate from (France’s) St Philbert’s day, 20th August, when the nuts are ready for harvesting, or possibly from the German for ‘Full Beard’ which the husk or bract of the nut resembles (slightly).

Other things that eat hazelnuts: wood and yellow necked mice, dormice, bank voles, jays, woodpeckers, magpies, nuthatches, great tits, rats, insects (especially the appropriately named nut weevil) and squirrels.

Below an altitude of 700m or so (even Ashmore can only claim to be 210m above sea level) hazel will thrive in all sorts of conditions, tolerating heavy shade, wet (but not waterlogged) areas and steep slopes but they don’t really like it too hot, windy or cold; which generally we don’t have for long.

So, they have been here a long time and will grow almost anywhere. They don’t produce nuts for fun but to propagate the species. The trees are mature enough to produce nuts after approximately 6-7 years and continue to do so for the life of the plant. Why are there not forests of seedlings under or near our hazels?

Most of the evidence points at the grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis.  Sciurus, is derived from two Greek words, skia, meaning shadow, and oura, meaning tail. This name alludes to the squirrel sitting in the shadow of its own tail. The specific name, carolinensis, refers to the Carolinas, where the species was first recorded.). This relative newcomer to the UK (generally quoted as being imported from the USA in 1876 as an ornamental species) is an expert at colonising places and making the most of opportunities, making itself at home in the countryside, forestry plantations, parks and gardens.

An emotive subject but you can’t mention grey squirrels without comparing them with reds.

Bigger and more adaptable than the native red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris), the grey is capable of eating many different food sources such as tree bark, tree buds, berries, many types of seeds and nuts: acornswalnuts, and hazelnuts; some types of fungi, insectsfrogs, small rodents (including other squirrels); small birds, their eggs, and young. They also gnaw on bones, antlers, probably as a source of minerals scarce in their normal diet, electrical insulation and other installations. Significantly they can eat fruit such as acorns and hazelnuts long before they are ripe and so have access to more food for longer.

Red squirrels have a mainly vegetarian diet that includes seeds, hazelnuts and green acorns (they are less able to digest the polyphenols in mature acorns), fungus, bark, and sapwood. They also occasionally take animal prey such as young birds and eggs.

They especially favour pine seeds, but also eat larch and spruce seeds. They are more solitary than greys and so tend to need larger territories.

Historic hunting (reds were hunted well into the 20th century and only became protected in the 1970s), habitat reduction/change (newly planted mixed or broadleaved woodland is more difficult for reds to thrive in than coniferous woodland when put in direct competition with greys), climate change and diseases in certain tree species, e.g. Phytophthora ramorum in larch, the squirrel pox virus (SQPV), road kill and predation by household pets have all meant that the red squirrel is under pressure from all sides and is not doing well.

Grey squirrels out-compete native reds for food and space.  Today there are approximately 2.5m grey squirrels in Britain, but less than 140,000 reds, and these are mostly confined to the north of the UK and several famous islands further south.

I had heard that grey squirrels eat hazelnuts before they are ripe.  Here are some squirrel-chewed and discarded nutshells, photographed on July 10th this year – more than a month before St Philbert’s Day.  The grey squirrel on the right (July 31st) had just dropped a bunch of nuts, and watched, frozen in horror, as they were purloined by a puppy.

Of course, the ripe nuts might reach the ground and germinate and then be eaten – a subject for discussion along with coppicing I think.