Crataegus monogyna Seeds | Common Hawthorn
LATIN NAME: Crataegus monogyna
COMMON NAME: Common Hawthorn, Whitethorn, May Tree
Plant Profile
The fruit is a small, fleshy haw, red to dark crimson, and inside it sits a single hard stone. The Midland hawthorn almost always carries more than one, and where the two grow together they cross freely enough that the odd two-stoned fruit turns up on an otherwise single-seeded tree, one reason the two are so often lumped together in autumn.
The second separation is in the leaf. Crataegus monogyna is cut into three to seven narrow lobes that run almost to the midrib; the woodland hawthorn is lobed only in its upper half and nearly whole towards the stalk.
Both trees arm themselves with thorns that are modified branches, borne in the axil of a leaf and capable of carrying leaves and buds of their own, which is why a laid hedge regenerates from the wood behind the thorn rather than dying back to a stub.
Haws make a firm red jelly with a faintly almond-like note from the stone, and the fruit is best taken after cold nights have softened it; cook the haws with a little water, strain through a jelly bag, and do not push the pulp through or the jelly will cloud. In some districts the haws were dried and ground as a substitute for coffee, and in spring the young leaves were eaten straight from the hedge under the name bread and cheese.
The dense thorny framework shelters small birds, the blossom feeds insects early in the season, and the haws hold food into the hardest part of the winter.
Science & Biotechnology
The leaf and flower are the subject of a long line of European pharmacological work. The active material is a mixture of oligomeric procyanidins, built from catechin and epicatechin units, together with the flavonoid glycosides hyperoside, vitexin, vitexin-2”-O-rhamnoside and rutin, and chlorogenic acid. Europe has kept hawthorn leaf and flower in its pharmacopoeia, and standardised extracts have been tested in clinical research on heart function in older patients.
Hawthorn is variable from seed and slow from cuttings, so laboratories use shoot-tip and nodal culture to multiply selected lines on a salt medium with a cytokinin. Cell and callus cultures have also been used to follow how flavonoid and procyanidin content responds to light, alongside molecular studies of hedgerow populations.
Uses & Benefits
Hawthorn is the backbone of the European hedgerow. It was planted in enormous quantities as field boundaries and, later, as the standard stock of enclosure planting, and the craft of hedge laying developed around it: stems are cut part way through near the ground, bent over at an angle and woven between upright stakes, then bound along the top. The cut stem stays attached to its root and throws new growth from the bend, so a laid hedge thickens from the base instead of going bare. A trimmed hedge flowers poorly, because the blossom comes on the previous season’s wood.
The flowers open in late spring in flat clusters of small five-petalled blooms that carry a heavy sweetness with an amine note beneath it, aimed at a wide range of insects, flies and beetles as much as bees.
Each haw holds one seed inside a stone, and the fruit is eaten by thrushes, redwings and fieldfares that move along the hedge line and drop the stones further on. The stone is stubborn, carrying a hard coat, which is why hawthorn appears in a new field boundary long after the parent hedge.
Growing from Seed
Clean the pulp off the haws and sow the stones in a prepared bed or a deep pan of gritty compost, pressed in about twice their own thickness, and leave the whole thing outdoors where the weather can work on the coats. Part of the sowing may come up after the first cold season and the rest only after a second, so keep the bed labelled and undisturbed.
Lift the seedlings when they are 20 to 30 centimetres tall and have begun to make side shoots, and plant them into their final line 30 to 45 centimetres apart for a stock-proof hedge. Water through the first summer, keep the base clear of grass, and cut the leading shoot back after planting to encourage branching low down. Trim a young hedge lightly for a few seasons to thicken it, then lay or trim on a rotation so some wood is always left to carry the next spring’s blossom. Fireblight and rust appear in wet districts, so clear fallen leaves from the base.
Our Take
For a hedge you can lay, this is the tree to buy in quantity. Grow the Midland hawthorn (Crataegus laevigata) alongside it and you will see the two-seeded difference, while the Chinese hawthorn (Crataegus pinnatifida) provides the larger, sharper fruit of the eastern orchards. The common dogwood (Cornus sanguinea) is the other traditional hedgerow shrub worth planting between the thorns.
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