Photo: Elstro — CC BY 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.
⚠ Honestly: mealy and bland — for jelly, not fresh eating. Worth flagging too: outside its native European/W. Asian range it is a documented escapee — bird-spread seed has let it naturalize aggressively enough in parts of North America, Australia and New Zealand to be treated as invasive, so plant it with more caution there than the straightforward hedging reputation it has at home.
- Hardiness
- Zone 4–8
- Habit
- Tree
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- Sept–Oct
- Mature size
- Thorny tree/hedge 5–10 m
- Light
- Full sun; tolerates partial
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Europe, north-west Africa and western Asia; very widely naturalised elsewhere, and a serious invasive in parts of North America, Australia and New Zealand.
- Status
- Both wild and cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 4–6 yrs
- Growth speed
- Moderate — 20–40 cm a year, and long-lived; hedge specimens are often centuries old
- Spacing
- 50 cm (20 in) apart — about 4 per m² (3.7 per 10 sq ft)
- Leaf shape
- Deeply lobed with 3–7 spreading, pointed lobes reaching more than halfway to the midrib, dark green and glossy above — more deeply cut than the similar Crataegus laevigata (midland hawthorn), which is a key identification point between the two.
- Root system
- A branching heart-root system — several primary roots radiating down and outward from the crown rather than a single deep taproot.
- Fruit description
- Deep red haw 7–10 mm with a single stone — the character that names the species, since related hawthorns carry two or more. Mealy, mildly sweet and faintly apple-like; used for jelly, ketchup and country wine rather than eaten in quantity.
- Propagation
- Seed, and slowly: the stone needs warm stratification followed by cold, and commonly sits for two winters before germinating. Named forms are grafted onto seedling hawthorn. Cuttings are not a practical route.
- Pollination
- Self-fertile
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.
Growing guide
How it spreads. Typically a single- or multi-stemmed small thorny tree or large shrub reaching 5–10 m, historically coppiced and laid as stock-proof hedging across Britain and Europe rather than left to grow free — it doesn't sucker aggressively where native. Outside its native Europe/W. Asia/N. Africa range, however, it is a documented invasive: birds readily disperse the haws, and it has escaped cultivation to form dense, hard-to-control thickets in parts of North America (e.g. Willamette Valley, Oregon, where an infestation was severe enough to force abandonment of a nature preserve), Australia and New Zealand, outcompeting native vegetation in riparian areas, woodlands and grasslands.
Growing tips. Extremely tolerant of hard pruning and neglect — a large part of its historical value in Britain and Europe was precisely this: laid and cut as a dense, thorny, stock-proof hedgerow that regenerates readily even when cut back severely, and remains a mainstay of wildlife hedging today. Watch for fireblight (scorched-looking dieback, cut out affected wood), fungal leaf spot (cosmetic grey-centered spotting) and — since it's an alternate host — cedar-hawthorn and related Gymnosporangium rusts where junipers grow nearby. Where it has been introduced outside Europe, be aware of and manage its potential to naturalize and spread via bird-dispersed seed.
Companion planting. Rosaceae host for cedar-apple/hawthorn rust (Gymnosporangium spp.), which needs both a Rosaceae host and a Juniperus (juniper/eastern red cedar) host to complete its life cycle. Spores can travel over a mile, so distance alone won't fully prevent it — resistant cultivars are the more reliable control, but avoiding nearby junipers helps.
Grow journal
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