Wild hazel is a multi-stemmed species that tends to form thickets in gullies and damper areas as is shown here amongst very dense vegetation in an East Gippsland gully
With Ken Slee
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Hazel Pomaderris (Pomaderris aspera)
This shrub, one of a number of Pomaderris species, is native to eastern Australia occurring from northern New South Wales to Tasmania.
As with many Australian plants it probably gets its name from its resembling something that was well-known to early European settlers – in the case of this Australian native its leaves resemble those of the hazelnut tree which is widely grown in Europe for nut production. In reality our hazel is totally unrelated to other ‘hazels’ growing elsewhere in the world and does not produce nuts.
Hazel pomaderris (or just hazel or wild hazel to most hunters) is usually a shrub up to four metres tall but on rare occasions may be considerably taller. The bark is dark brown. Leaves are five to twenty centimetres long and two to eight wide with serrations on the leaf edge and a corrugated or rough surface and conspicuous veins. Leaf undersides are whitish and finely haired. Yellow flowers are produced during spring. The fruit, a dark brown capsule, is around three millimetres in diameter with seed maturing in late summer or early autumn.
This species is relatively common on moist slopes and near streams in sambar habitat and may form thickets. It is obviously a favoured browse species and it is common to see twigs and leaves missing or even stems pulled down and broken. In many areas it probably forms a significant percentage of the sambar’s diet.
Finding Out More
Knowing a little about native and introduced plants that deer use will certainly make any hunting expedition more interesting and possibly more productive. While we can cover a small number of plants in this regular item on sambar browse plants there are probably hundreds of different plants throughout the sambar’s range (and the range of other Australian deer species) that will be utilised in some way – as food, cover, favoured rub tree or combinations of these three. If you would like to learn more about the deer in your area a book such as Native Trees and Shrubs of South-Eastern Australia by Leon Costermans is a great starting point. This paperback book of over 400 pages is widely available, contains hundreds of colour photographs that make plant identification easy and it really is a mine of useful information.
If you are a deer hunter and looking for a Christmas present that you might like to put on your library shelf this might be just the thing! At about $45 it is a steal.
The leaves of wild hazel are very characteristic and this makes the shrub quite easy to recognise even if flowers or fruit are absent
Native Trees and Shrubs of South-Eastern Australia by Costermans is a great book if you want to identify the plants that sambar are using.
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