Hawthorn: Identification, Benefits & Uses

Hawthorn trees (Crataegus sp.) are a group of edible and medicinal trees that are used around the world. Just about every culture has traditional hawthorn recipes and remedies, using haws (the edible fruit) or their fragrant hawthorn flowers or nutritious leaves.

Learn how to identify hawthorn trees, distinguish them from look-alikes, and use the berries, flowers, and leaves for everything from jelly and syrup to heart-supporting herbal preparations.

A few years back, walking at the edge of the woods in early June, I ran across a breathtaking tree that I’d never noticed before. It was covered in white flowers with an intoxicating tropical scent. Plums and apples had long since stopped blooming and set fruit, and the leaves weren’t quite right in any case.

Plucked off a few leaves and managed to identify a potent wild medicinal: Hawthorn.

Now that I know what to look for, I see hawthorn trees everywhere! What once looked like just another wild crabapple now has its own character, and I’ve found that hawthorns are incredibly common in the north woods. They’re also popular as landscape and street trees in the city and suburbs, and once you can spot them you’ll find them in parks, hedgerows, abandoned pastures, and along railroad cuts. Across most of the temperate world, somebody planted a hawthorn within walking distance of you a hundred years ago, and it’s almost certainly still there.

Every year, we make a few new hawthorn recipes, from jelly to wine, and we also make medicinal recipes like tincture and syrup. They’re all delicious! Once you can identify a hawthorn, you’ll find the tree pairs naturally with the other small-tree wild fruits that grow in similar habitat: serviceberries, wild apples and crabapples, chokecherries, and rowanberries.

What Is Hawthorn?

Crataegus species are a group of several hundred perennial shrubs and small trees in the Rosaceae or rose family. They’re commonly called hawthorns, quickthorns, thorn apples, May trees, Mayflowers, hawberries, or whitethorns.

Hawthorns are native to the world’s temperate regions. There are hawthorn species native to Europe, Asia, North Africa, and North America. Some species, like the Common Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna), have been introduced widely outside their native range. The hawthorn family is enormously diverse, with botanists generally recognizing somewhere between 200 and 1,000 species depending on how the lumpers and splitters classify the many natural hybrids and regional variants. Most hawthorns hybridize readily with one another in the wild, which is part of why species-level identification can be so tricky.

Common Hawthorn Species

The exact hawthorn species you’ll find depends on where you live, but a handful of species show up most often in foraging conversations:

• Common Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) — the European one-seeded hawthorn that’s naturalized widely across North America. Each haw contains a single seed.
• Midland Hawthorn (Crataegus laevigata) — the European two-seeded hawthorn, also called English Hawthorn; hybridizes readily with C. monogyna.
• Downy Hawthorn (Crataegus mollis) — large native North American species with hairy young leaves; among the first to ripen each year.
• Cockspur Hawthorn (Crataegus crus-galli) — extremely common in the eastern US, with notably long thorns (up to 3 inches).
• Black Hawthorn (Crataegus douglasii) — Pacific Northwest species with sweet dark-purple to black berries; widely considered one of the best-tasting hawthorns.
• Washington Hawthorn (Crataegus phaenopyrum) — common ornamental species across the eastern US with bright red berries that persist into winter.
• Mayhaw (Crataegus aestivalis, C. opaca, C. rufula) — Southern species that grow in swampy bottomlands; ripens in May and is famous for jelly.
• Mexican Hawthorn (Crataegus mexicana) — used widely in Mexican cooking and as the central ingredient of the candy rielitos.
• Chinese Hawthorn (Crataegus pinnatifida) — culturally significant in China; the haws are made into candy, jelly, and traditional medicines.

All Crataegus species produce edible berries, though some are sweeter and more palatable than others. Practically, you don’t need to identify your hawthorn down to the species level to use the berries, leaves, or flowers; getting it to the genus level is enough to forage confidently.

Is Hawthorn Edible?

All hawthorn species produce edible, berry-like fruits or haws. While none are poisonous, some species have excellent flavor, while others are unpalatable. You can eat hawthorn berries raw or cooked, but you should try to avoid the seeds.

Like apples, hawthorn seeds contain a cyanogenic compound called amygdalin. In the small intestine, this compound breaks down to release hydrogen cyanide, which can be toxic in large quantities. The same is true of apple seeds, peach pits, and cherry pits, and the practical advice is the same: eat the flesh, spit or strain out the seeds. The hard, woody texture of hawthorn seeds means most people naturally avoid swallowing them whole, and any sensible jelly-making process strains them out.

Young hawthorn leaves, flower buds, and flowers are also all edible and can be eaten raw or cooked. Herbalists use all of these parts of the hawthorn and the berries medicinally, generally in internal preparations.

Hawthorns are also generally palatable to livestock like cattle and goats. Sometimes, people even use them as health supplements for animals like horses.

If you have a heart condition or are on blood thinners or heart medication, talk to your physician before consuming hawthorn. Hawthorn is often used to lower blood pressure and treat heart issues. It may interact with certain conditions or medications, including beta-blockers, blood pressure medications, and digoxin. The interactions are not necessarily dangerous, but the combined effect can be stronger than expected, so a conversation with your prescriber is a good idea before adding regular hawthorn use to your routine.

Hawthorn Medicinal Benefits

Hawthorn has a long history of folk use wherever it grows. In ancient Greece, Dioscorides documented hawthorn’s medicinal usage in the 1st century A.D., and Pliny and Galen also mentioned it in their writings. Tang-Ben-Cao recorded hawthorn use in China around 659 A.D. as well.

Hawthorn’s health benefits may have also contributed to its spiritual use. The Romans hung hawthorn sprigs over cradles to protect newborns from harm, early Christians hung them over doorways during the Middle Ages for protection, and Pagans used hawthorn flowers to create garlands for May Day celebrations.

With its prolonged and widespread use, it’s no surprise that hawthorn has remained a common medicinal herb today. Modern herbalists often reach for hawthorn when making internal preparations for heart health, circulation, digestion, and immune system support. You can even find hawthorn listed as an ingredient in herbal tea blends at your local grocery store.

In traditional Chinese medicine, hawthorn berries are a common prescription for hypertension or high blood pressure. Modern studies have supported this use. A randomized, double-blind study from the Phytotherapy Research found that participants taking a hawthorn berry extract showed promising reductions in resting diastolic blood pressure and reported reduced anxiety.

Hawthorn supplements help improve related conditions like obesity and high blood sugar. A 2019 study looking at Chinese Hawthorn (Crataegus pinnatifida) found that it may help improve cholesterol levels and treat obesity, high blood sugar, and atherosclerosis or hardening of the artery walls.

Hawthorn’s use as a digestive aid may also be well deserved. A 2018 study in mice found that hawthorn extract sped up their digestive process. A previous study on rats from 2008 also indicated that hawthorn berry extract has notable anti-inflammatory, gastroprotective, free-radical-scavenging, and antimicrobial activities.

Adding hawthorn berries to your diet in any form can also help support a healthy lifestyle. Modern studies have found that hawthorn berries are a rich source of antioxidants. The most common preparations among modern herbalists are hawthorn tincture, syrup, capsules, and tea, with the tincture being the most concentrated and the tea being the gentlest. Hawthorn pairs especially well with motherwort for anxiety-and-heart formulas, and the two herbs are often combined in traditional Western herbalism.

Where to Find Hawthorn

Hawthorns grow wild in much of the world’s temperate regions. You can find native hawthorn species growing in Europe, North America, Asia, and North Africa. Many species have also naturalized outside their native ranges, like the European Common Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna), in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

An incredibly diverse group, you can find hawthorns adapted to a wide range of habitats. Some, like the large Downy Hawthorn (Crataegus mollis), prefer moist valleys and hillsides of open woodlands. Others, like the Yellow Hawthorn (Crataegus flava), thrive in dry, sandy, and gravelly soils of pine forests and woodland borders. Often, hawthorn species thrive in areas where they receive full sun to partial shade, like abandoned fields, forest edges, open woodlands, and along railroad tracks and streams.

Hawthorns are also one of the most commonly planted ornamental trees in cities and suburbs across temperate North America and Europe, so a productive specimen may be as close as your nearest park, churchyard, college campus, or older residential neighborhood. Older homesteads often have hawthorns planted along driveways, around the perimeter of pastures (where the thorny branches make natural livestock barriers), and at the corners of stone walls.

When to Find Hawthorns

As perennial trees and shrubs, hawthorns can be found year-round. However, they’re much easier to identify when the leaves are on during the summer or spring when they’re in flower.

Hawthorns usually bloom in May or June, which has earned them the common names May flowers or May trees. You can harvest the flower buds, blossoms, and tender, young leaves this time of year. The flowers are short-lived, often only on the tree for two or three weeks, so the bloom season is the harvest window for those parts.

Hawthorns fruit in late summer or fall. Generally, the Downy Hawthorn (Crataegus mollis) is among North America’s first hawthorns to ripen in August or September. The exact date of your hawthorn harvest will depend on your species and climate. Most North American hawthorns ripen in September and October, and the haws often persist on the tree well into winter, which means you can sometimes still find good berries in November and December (though the early-frost berries tend to be sweetest, just like wild apples).

Identifying Hawthorns

Hawthorns are relatively easy to identify, though specific species can be difficult to distinguish. Most hawthorns are shrubs or small trees, with a few of the tallest species reaching 50 feet, while many species remain shorter.

Hawthorns tend to have many-branched dense crowns that are rounded or flat-topped. As the name hawthorn suggests, they all bear long thorns, which can help you identify them. Most hawthorns are easy to recognize from a distance by their growth habit alone: a small, twiggy, dense, flat-topped crown atop a short trunk, often hung with bright red fruit clusters in fall.

Hawthorn Leaves

Hawthorn leaves vary with species. However, most have small, green, ovate to elliptical, sawtoothed leaves. Some species have leaves less than one inch long, like the Pensacola Hawthorn (Crataegus lacrimata), while others, like the Downy Hawthorn (Crataegus mollis), may have leaves that reach 4 inches long.

Many species’ leaves also have shallow lobes. A few, like the Parsley Hawthorn (Crataegus marshallii), named for its deeply divided leaves, have more noticeable differences.

The leaves are usually held on short, slender leaf stalks and are alternately arranged. Hawthorn leaves tend to be hairy, especially when young. They usually turn red or bright orange in autumn.

Hawthorn Stems and Bark

Hawthorns may grow from 15 to 50 feet tall. They tend to be many-branched with rounded or flat-topped crowns. Their twigs are slender, multi-branched, and slightly zig-zag. The twigs and branches have long, thin spines or thorns. Hawthorn bark is usually gray or brownish. It’s often smooth on young trees and twigs and becomes scaly or develops longitudinal fissures or narrow ridges with age.

Hawthorn Thorns

The thorns are one of hawthorn’s defining features. Most species have stiff, sharp, single-pointed thorns growing along the branches and twigs, ranging from about 1/2 inch to over 3 inches long depending on species. Cockspur Hawthorn (C. crus-galli) is famous for some of the longest thorns in the genus. Some ornamental cultivars have been bred to be thornless, but every wild hawthorn you encounter in North America will have thorns somewhere.

Be careful when harvesting; the thorns are stiff enough to easily go through a thin glove and can cause infections. Long sleeves and a sturdy pair of leather gloves make harvest easier and safer.

Hawthorn Flowers

Hawthorns usually bloom in May or June, and the flowers develop in clusters at the end of twigs. Hawthorns mostly have white flowers, but they may occasionally be pink. There are also many domesticated hawthorn cultivars with pink flowers.

Hawthorn flowers usually have five rounded petals in a cup-like base of 5 narrow calyx lobes. Each flower usually has 5 to 20 stamens with yellow or pink anthers and a pistil with 1 to 5 styles. The smell of hawthorn flowers is famously distinctive, with notes of almond and a slight musky undertone; it’s not for everyone, but once you’ve smelled it, you’ll never confuse hawthorn with anything else in bloom.

Hawthorn Fruit

Hawthorn fruit usually matures to red in late summer or autumn and sometimes remains on the tree into winter. The fruits are small, usually under one inch wide, round, and form in clusters. The flower’s five calyx lobes usually persist at the tip of each fruit.

Each fruit usually contains 1 to 5 nutlets, each containing one seed. The nutlets stick together in the center, forming a stone-like structure. The sweet fruit has a dry, mealy texture on most species. Botanically, hawthorn fruits are pomes (the same fruit type as apples and pears), not true berries, which is part of why the texture is so distinctive: the flesh resembles a tiny mealy apple more than a juicy berry.

Hawthorn fruit color varies by species, from the bright red of C. monogyna and C. phaenopyrum, to the orange-red of C. mollis, to the yellow of C. flava, to the deep purple-black of C. douglasii. The flesh inside is usually pale yellow to greenish or pinkish.

Hawthorn Look-Alikes

Several other small trees and shrubs in the rose family produce small red fruits that can be confused with hawthorn at a glance, especially when you’re new to identifying these trees. The good news is none of the most common look-alikes are dangerously toxic, and most are themselves edible. Still, knowing the differences helps you understand exactly what you’re putting in your basket.

Hackberry

Hawthorn is sometimes mistaken for another wild edible, the Hackberry (Celtis occidentalis). However, Hackberry differs in a few notable ways:

• Hackberries tend to be taller, ranging from 50 to 70 feet and occasionally reaching 100 feet.
• Hackberries have light green ovate to ovate-lanceolate leaves that often have wart-like growths.
• Hackberries have tiny, inconspicuous cream or greenish flowers.
• Hackberries ripen to orange, reddish-brown, or dark purple-brown and lack the calyx lobes found on hawthorns.
• Hackberries contain a single round seed.
• Hackberries don’t have thorns.

Rowanberry (Mountain Ash)

Another look-alike is American Mountain Ash or Rowan (Sorbus sp.). However, it too differs in several noticeable ways:

• American Mountain Ash has pinnately compound leaves 6 to 8 inches long.
• American Mountain Ash twigs are stout, reddish-brown, and hairy.
• American Mountain Ash flowers grow in crowded, upright clusters.
• American Mountain Ash has many-seeded berries with bitter pulp.
• American Mountain Ash doesn’t have thorns.

Wild Apples and Crabapples

Hawthorns can also be confused with wild apples and crabapples (Malus sp.). Apples are distinguished in the following ways:

• Crabapples tend to have fewer, smaller thorns, if any at all.
• Typically, the young stems of crabapples are coated in thick, white wooly hairs.
• Crabapple leaves are green above and pale below.
• Crabapples are usually 1 to 1 1/2 inches in diameter, generally larger than hawthorn fruits.
• Crabapples contain a central core with a tough membrane surrounding several small seeds, much like a tiny apple.

Indian Hawthorn

One important note for foragers in the southern United States: Indian Hawthorn (Rhaphiolepis indica) is not a true hawthorn at all. Despite the name, it’s in a different genus (Rhaphiolepis) and produces small dark-purple to blue-black berries that look more like blueberries than typical red haws. Indian Hawthorn is widely planted as a foundation shrub in the southern US and is technically edible (especially when cooked into jelly), but it doesn’t share the medicinal properties of true Crataegus hawthorns and isn’t a substitute for them in herbal preparations.

• Indian Hawthorn is an evergreen shrub (true hawthorns are deciduous).
• Indian Hawthorn has thick, leathery, dark green oval leaves with no lobes.
• Indian Hawthorn has small dark-purple to blue-black berries, not red haws.
• Indian Hawthorn has no thorns.

If you’re foraging for hawthorn for herbal use specifically, make sure your plant is in the genus Crataegus. Indian Hawthorn berries can be eaten and made into jelly but won’t deliver the heart-supporting effects associated with true hawthorn.

How to Harvest Hawthorn

Hawthorn is one of the more rewarding wild fruits to harvest because most parts of the tree are useful, and the harvest season for the different parts spans most of the growing year.

Leaves and flower buds are best in early to mid-spring, when the new growth is fully expanded but still tender. Pinch off the youngest leaves and unopened flower buds in handfuls; they get tougher and less palatable as the season progresses. Leaves can be eaten raw in salads or dried for tea.

Flowers are best when fully open in May or June, depending on your latitude. The flowering window is usually only two to three weeks per tree, so don’t put off harvesting if you’re planning to dry them for tea or tincture. Snip whole flowering tops with scissors and dry in a single layer on a screen out of direct sunlight, or use them fresh.

Berries (haws) are best after they’ve fully ripened in late summer or fall, depending on the species and your climate. The berries are sweetest after a hard frost (which breaks down the cell walls and releases the sugars), so many traditional foragers wait until October to harvest. If you’re in a hurry, you can pick the haws when they’re fully red and freeze them for 24 hours, which mimics the effect of a frost. Pick the whole clusters off the tree by hand, watching for thorns.

Once harvested, hawthorn berries store well. Fresh haws keep in the refrigerator for two to three weeks. They freeze well for up to a year, and they dehydrate beautifully into a hard, raisin-like fruit that keeps in an airtight jar for several months. Hawthorn berries also tincture well, which is one of the best ways to capture their full medicinal value for long-term storage.

Always avoid harvesting from trees along busy roadsides or near industrial sites, since hawthorn picks up petroleum residue and heavy metals from contaminated soils. The best harvests come from rural roadsides, organic orchard edges, and pasture-edge trees on land you know hasn’t been sprayed.

Ways to Use Hawthorns

Hawthorns are often overlooked even by foragers. These trees deserve your attention, though! Besides being tasty and abundant, hawthorns have incredible benefits, especially for heart health and digestion. Plus, they’re loaded with healthy antioxidants.

If you’re interested in herbalism, you can use the leaves, flower buds, blossoms, and berries in teas, tinctures, or syrups. You can also dry them for later use.

If teas and tinctures aren’t your thing, hawthorns are easy to add to your diet in other ways. The young tender leaves make a decent salad green or potherb in early spring. The blossoms and flower buds also make delicious and beautiful additions to salads.

However, most foragers find that the berries are the biggest prize, and people have been combing the woodlands and hedgerows for them every fall for thousands of years.

The berries’ sweet flesh easily lends them to use in jams, jellies, fruit leathers, cakes, and cookies. They also make excellent sauces like hawthorn ketchup or vinaigrette for more savory meals.

Traditionally, people have also used hawthorn berries in wild wines, ciders, and meads. You can also use them to flavor liqueurs if fermenting isn’t your thing.

The fruits of Mexican Hawthorn (Crataegus mexicana) are widely used in Mexico. People stuff them into pinatas they break as part of a pre-Christmas celebration called Las Posadas. They also cook them with other fruits to make a Christmas punch and mix them with sugar and chili powder to make a popular candy called rielitos.

Hawthorn berries are also widely used in China. People use them to make candy, alcoholic beverages, snacks, and sauces, including Cantonese sweet and sour sauce.

Nearly everywhere they grow, you will find a traditional recipe that includes hawthorns!

Hawthorn Recipes

• Easily preserve large amounts of hawthorns with our simple Hawthorn Jelly recipe.
• Make heart-supporting Hawthorn Syrup from fresh or dried haws to enjoy through the winter.
• Try making your own Hawthorn Wine or Mead, a traditional way to preserve the harvest in fermented form.
• If you’re looking for a decadent treat for your sweet tooth, try this gorgeous Berry Brownie Batter Cake with Hawthorn Berry Buttercream Frosting from Gather Victoria.
• Spice things up with this Hawthorn Sweet Chili Sauce from Home is Where Our Heart Is.
• Reap the heart benefits of hawthorn berries with this Hawthorn Cordial recipe from Learning Herbs.
• Make a healthy snack for the kids or your next hiking trip with this Chinese Haw Leather (Healthy Hawthorn Candy) recipe from Earth to Veg.
• Easily enjoy hawthorn’s health benefits with this Hawthorn Berry Tea Recipe from Healthy Green Savvy.
• Try this classic Hawthorn Berry Ketchup or Haw Ketchup from Great British Chefs.

Homemade Hawthorn Jelly

Hawthorn Wine (& Mead)

Hawthorn Syrup

Hawthorn FAQs

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