Every September, 99 percent of all the filberts grown in the United States fall from trees in a patch of the Willamette Valley west of the Cascades and north of Eugene, Oregon. Hazelnut Growers’ specialty products sales manager Dave Daniels told us that the word filbert, which is also common in England but nowhere else, has uncertain roots. It comes either from St. Philibert, whose nameday is August 22, the date the English crop is ready to harvest, or possibly from the fact that the husk around the nut’s shell resembles a full beard.
Because they are relatively large and not outrageously expensive, filberts often occupy lots of space in cans of mixed nuts. In the fall, when they are harvested, they are a popular ingredient in milk shakes throughout Oregon. One September morning, in a bacon-and-eggs hash house west of Portland, we threw out the topic, and nearly everyone at the U-shaped Formica counter got a piece of the conversation. “If a man says ‘filbert,’ he’s a Northwester,” one gent said, peering over the top of his Oregonian. “That’s what we always used to call them, and we still do. Hazelnut is for people back East or in Europe. They don’t know filberts.”