Note 8: Hawthorns - ne'er cast a clout
An evening dog walk a few weeks ago gave me the opportunity to spot my first hawthorn flowers of the year. Now that we're well into May the hedgerows are awash with the cascading white flowers so entwined with the month. The vernacular names echo the calendar perfectly with may-tree, white-may, and may, whilst others such as quickthorn, whitethorn, and bread and cheese have also been adopted over the centuries. Abundant throughout hedges and roadside verges it's an important plant for wildlife offering shelter, well protected nesting sites, berries in the autumn and a source of nectar for foraging bees in spring.
I've written about hawthorn before and I always enjoy discovering the folklore associated with country plants. Medieval superstitions associated the scent of hawthorn with The Great Plague. Botanists later attributed this to a chemical triethylamine, a compound found in decaying animal tissue. I always think it smells like vulcanised rubber. One oft repeated piece of advice relating to this plant is "Ne'er cast a clout till may is out". Originating in the 1700's it's advising us not to remove our winter clothes (clout) until the may blossom is out. "Till may is out" is often incorrectly thought to refer to the end of the month.
In Celtic mythology, encounters near hawthorn trees with the Faery Queen evoke the tale of Thomas the Rhymer's journey into the Faery Underworld. Legends portray hawthorns as sanctuaries for the ‘Wee Folk’, with solitary bushes in Ireland often believed to harbour faeries, shielded by magical forces. The Faery Queen's association with the hawthorn reflects ancient Goddess worship, once common in sacred hawthorn groves.
Crataegus monogyna, it's scientific name, derives from the Greek word 'kratos' meaning strength, and 'akis' meaning sharp referring to the thorns. Monogyna makes reference to the single seed or ovary.
As a garden plant its use tends to be restricted to mixed native hedging, though a number of variations are available with 'Biflora' known as The Glastonbury Thorn offered by several plant nurseries. According to legend, this tree that can often bloom twice in the year is connected to Saint Joseph of Arimathea, who is said to have arrived in Glastonbury in the 1st Century AD as one of the first to bring Christianity to Britain. The story tells that he planted his sacred hawthorn staff into the ground, where it miraculously took root and began to grow. Since the 17th Century, after James Montague, Bishop of Bath & Wells presented a flowering branch of the Glastonbury Thorn to Queen Anne, the wife of King James I, a blossom from the tree has been sent to the reigning monarch each Christmas.
'Compacta', as the name suggests, is a dwarf cultivar that was introduced 120 years ago while 'Stricta' is tall and fastigiate in form.
Perhaps one of the best known varieties is 'Paul's Scarlet' belonging to the same genus but originating as a sport of Crataegus Rosea Flora Plena. It's known botanically as Crataegus x media 'Paul's Scarlet'. With double, scarlet-pink flowers its a popular street tree. Proving itself as a reliable performer since the 1850's it was awarded the RHS award of garden merit in 2002.
One further hawthorn to whet your appetite is C. lavalleei 'Carrierei'. Introduced in the 1870's, it has oval shaped serrated leaves, and carries plenty of red berries throughout the winter. It's another plant that has performed well enough to have gained the RHS AGM. Several of these are planted in my local park and really do hold on to their berries well unless a particularly cold winter brings in exceptional numbers of fieldfare, redwing, or if we're lucky, waxwings all the way from Siberia.
