Copenhagen hawthorn

Photo: Author: Sten Porse — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source

Survives zone 4 through 8

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

A shrubby hawthorn with unusually large fruit for its size — up to 14mm — and a pleasant sweet flavour, though the flesh is hard and dry and wraps up to five stones. Ripens early September, ahead of most of the genus.

Hardiness

Zone 4–8

Habit

Shrub

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

September

Mature size

Thicket-forming shrub to 3 m

Light

Full sun for a crop; tolerates light woodland shade

Soil pH

5.5–8.5 (mildly acid to strongly alkaline)

Environment

Woodland

Native range

Eastern North America — Maine to Georgia and west to Michigan and Oklahoma, in thickets and open rocky woods.

Status

Wild

Years to fruit

5–8 yrs from seed; grafted trees often flower heavily in their third year

Growth speed

30–60 cm/year — medium, the 12–24 in/year quoted across the genus.

Spacing

450 cm (177 in) apart — about 20 m² (218 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Ovate to oblong-ovate blades with 4–5 pairs of sharp, spreading, pointed lobes, thin and hairless at maturity.

Root system

Seedlings put down a distinct taproot early, which is why nurseries lift them after a single year in the seedbed; established trees add a tough, wide-spreading lateral network and transplant badly once mature.

Fruit description

Oblong to top-shaped pomes 9–13 mm across, ripening an unusual bronze-green to red-brown rather than clear red, with dry, mealy flesh.

Propagation

Seed is slow and stubborn — the stony nutlets need roughly three months warm stratification followed by three months cold at about 4°C, and untreated seed can sit for two winters before moving. Named forms are budded or grafted onto seedling hawthorn rootstock instead, which also brings fruiting forward by several years.

Pollination

Depends on ploidy, which is rarely known for a given plant: diploid hawthorns are self-INCOMPATIBLE and need a second tree, while the many polyploid (triploid/tetraploid) species are self-compatible and largely apomictic, setting seed from a lone tree without cross-pollination. C. crus-galli is among the self-compatible polyploids. Insect-pollinated, chiefly by flies and beetles drawn to the heavy scent. ⚠ Since you usually cannot tell which you have, plant more than one if fruit is the point.

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.