The English Hawthorn

THE ENGLISH HAWTHORN.

Crataegus oxyacantha, Linn.

The English hawthorn is the best-known

species in the world. When it first came into cultivation, no man knows. Englishmen will tell you it has always formed the hedge rows of the countryside. This is the "blossoming May." The sweetness of its flowers, snowy white, or pink, or rose-colored, turns rural England into a garden, while linnets and skylarks fill the green lanes with music.

American "forests primeval" were swept with the woodman's axe before the hawthorns had their chance to assert themselves sufficiently to attract the attention of botanists and horticulturists. The showy flowers and fruits, the vivid coloring of autumn foliage, and the strik ing picturesqueness of the bare tree, with its rigid branches armed with menacing thorns, give most of these little trees attractiveness at any season. They grow in any soil and in any situation, and show the most remarkable improvement when cultivated. Their roots thrive in heavy clay. When young the little trees may be easily transplanted from the wild. They come readily from

seed, though in most species the seed takes two years to germinate.

With few exceptions, the flowers of our hawthrons are pure white, perfect, their parts in multiples of five—a family trait. Each flower is a miniature white rose. Rounded corymbs of these flowers on short side twigs cover the tree with a robe of white after the leaves appear. In autumn little fleshy fruits that look like apples, cluster on the twigs. Inside the thick skin, the flesh is mealy and sweetish around a few hard r.utlets that contain the seed. As a rule, the fruits are red. In a few species they are orange; in still fewer, yellow, blue, or black.

It is not practicable to describe the many varieties of our native hawthorns in a volume of the scope of this one. A few of the most distinctive species only can be included, but no one will ever confuse a hawthorn with any other tree.