hazelnuts/filberts

[Peter A. McGraw]

I was somewhat surprised at Andrea's posting.  To my knowledge, Oregon is
the only place in the U.S. where this nut is grown, at least commercially,
and to my knowledge it is the only part of the country where it's called a
"filbert" instead of a "hazelnut."

Trying to confirm this, I checked DARE and to my surprise found neither
word.

You can find canned hazelnuts in Oregon stores (even if they were grown in
Oregon), but you'll look in vain for a grower who calls his spread a
"hazelnut orchard"--or at least you'd have looked in vain for such a person
when I was growing up on an Oregon filbert farm.

Just today I ran across a newspaper story about an organization called the
Hazelnut Marketing Board, based in Portland.  Nothing strange about that if
they are trying to market the product nationally, but what was strange was
that the article, from the local paper in Wilsonville, the nearest town to
our family filbert farm, referred to a "local hazelnut grower."  I wonder
if the newspaper writer is an ignorant newcomer.  It's hard to imaging that
the local usage could be changing--it would still seem bizarre for me to
call the nut anything but a filbert when talking to another Oregonian, at
least when referring to the nut when it's still on the tree or on the
ground or being picked.

Can anyone report the use of "filbert" outside of Oregon?

Peter Mc.


--On Mon, Jun 26, 2000 10:45 AM -0700 Andrea Vine <avine at ENG.SUN.COM> wrote:

> Hmm, how about hazelnuts/filberts?
>
> Greg Pulliam wrote:
>>
>> How about garbanzos/chickpeas?
>> --



****************************************************************************
                               Peter A. McGraw
                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu