A member of the hazel family, Harry Lauder's Walking Stick, Corylus avellana 'Contorta', shows its most interesting side in the winter when its deciduous, curlycue branches are easy to view. One of Harry's Walking Sticks grows at the edge of our front deck, so each time I go out the front door these days, I can admire the wonderfully curled branches with their fat leaf buds. I have always loved vines and other plants that tend to grow in, through and around each other, creating complex and beautiful, intertwined patterns. The Walking Stick growing in my garden is quite lovely in this regard, intertwined as it is within itself. I plan to put another one in my backyard garden, where it will receive more yearround sun and thus grow even more thickly intertwined.I found the story of how this shrub gots its name interesting. First spotted growing in hedgerows north of Edinburgh, it was named, many years later, after Harry Lauder. An early 19th century Scottish entertainer who had been born into poverty, Henry McLennan Lauder mixed comedy with music, creating lovable characters whom he played in the years following World War I to raise huge sums of money for the pensions of poor and maimed returning soldiers. (Lauder was later knighted for all his charitable work.) One of Harry's characters, Roderick McSwankay, leaned on a twisted hazelwood cane, which thereafter became known as Harry Lauder's Walking Stick. See http://www.killerplants.com/whats-in-a-name/20050311.asp for the more complete story of Harry Lauder.
