Hi, I would post my question on a 'decorative shrub forum or tree forum'. Mrs. G

For the posters who say they see rows of bumps, that is likely the blight mentioned by anitamo and ken. The symptoms are the double rows of bumps and a loss of leaves. If you go out in early spring (early March here in PA), you will see small pink nodes on the branches. This is the ripe fungus. If you cut the branch, you will notice the brown from the dead wood starts on one side and eventually girdles the branch. The side it starts on is usually a flat spot on the otherwise rounded branch. I've had 2 of these nice trees. One I grew from seed I got after taking some catkins from another HLWS tree and pollinated mine. Since these bloom well after the normal Corylus avellana, you can't pollinate them with those. Anyway, I got small plants not grafted. They grew slowly for about 5 years old and then started dying. By this time the parent plant was also taken by the blight. I no longer have any, but lust after the nice ones I see sometimes.

Both of my Harry Lauder's walking stick shrubs died from Eastern Filbert Blight. I would love to try again but don't know if there is any preventing this disease? Now everytime I see one of these contorted filberts, I look for the stomata and invariably, I see it. Anyone else in Connecticut or New York who have been successful in spraying to protect their plants, would you reply with what fungicide you used that has worked? Also, how often have you sprayed and what season have you sprayed. I would also like to hear from others who have tried to spray and failed so I can determine if I would just be wasting my time trying to prevent this disease.

Mine has either suckered or air layered itself in two different locations about six feet from the mother plant with no signs of suckering in several years. The mother plant is nearly 20 years old and sends up suckers from the rootstock that I keep cut back at least twice a year. I just cut the suckers a week or two ago and some were 12 feet tall. Here is a site that talks about layering to get clones on its own rootstock. https://www.freeplants.com/harry-lauders.htm and from cuttings https://homeguides.sfgate.com/root-cutting-contorted-filbert-71034.html