Frosted hawthorn

Photo: Homer Edward Price — CC BY 2.0 · 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.

Named for the waxy bloom on the unripe fruit, which frosts it a pale blue-green. Ripens sweet and yellow, about 1cm across with up to five large stones — a pie and preserve fruit that also dries well.

Hardiness

Zone 4–8

Habit

Tree

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

October

Mature size

Small tree to 6 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

North-eastern North America — Newfoundland to North Carolina and west to Wisconsin and Oklahoma, in thickets and rocky open woods and on low hill slopes, often over limestone.

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

550 cm (217 in) apart — about 30 m² (326 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Broadly ovate, bluish-green and firm-textured, with several pairs of short sharp lobes and a doubly toothed margin, 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

Rounded pomes 10–15 mm across, ripening red beneath a distinct whitish waxy bloom — the frosting the epithet pruinosa records — with hard, dry flesh that only softens late.

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.