Travelling through the thicket Part Two

Hawthorn - Blood And Bravery

Heading down one arm of the Rosaceae family tree we meet Hawthorn, Crataegus monogyna. Blooming pure white early in the spring, setting edible young leaves and eventually an edible red berry hanging on to its autumnal finger tips, Hawthorn has many uses as food, festive decoration and medicine. On the British Isles and beyond we have been harnessing the courage of the Haw berry for centuries, using it to strengthen and purify our blood and ward off evil spirits from our houses. To flirt with the biochemistry a bit, with its flavonoids and phenols offering a potentially cardio protective and antioxidant effect, as well as triterpenoids with possible anti-tumor and anti-diabetic effects, you can see why hawthorn was a mainstay of traditional European medicine and is gaining traction in mainstream biomedicine. But what of its mythic and cultural significance? Just as with the Rose, we see hawthorn in reams of mythic and folk texts, used in an array of sometimes contradicting situations. Let’s start with blood sucking screech owls….

Fig 6. Hawthorn and its Haws, thorns, blossoms, and leaf display. (Reynolds, 2025)

Protect me Cardea, O great goddess of door hinges!

I mean no poo-poo to door hinges, what a genius invention, and Cardea was not only Goddess of door hinges but of children, and their protection, and hinges were extrapolated to mean any axis or centre, and the change that emanates from that centre. We get our English word cardinal from this Goddess (cardinal points being each of the four points on a compass)…. And what was the plant most associated with her? Hawthorn of course. A plant of change and protection, in one particular legend hung above windows and doors by Cardea to protect children from witches turned screech owls that were said to fly into the house at night and suck unwary children’s blood. Interestingly, these screech Owls of mythic past were considered the possible roots of the Vampire, and so it makes perfect sense that the go-to wood for a vampire stake was also hawthorn. The hawthorn wood whittled into a spike used as an antidote to the sociopathic, carnal bestiality of vampires is a wood that embodies protection and, as we see in the myths of Hymen the Greek god of marriage, with love and devotion too. It is said that haw flowers were used to decorate bridal chambers and the bridal crown, and that the bridal torch that lit the wedding altars in devotion to Hymen were made of hawthorn wood too.

John Collier: Queen Guineveres Maying, 1900

Fig 7,8. Left: Hawthorn blossoms being worn and paraded in a May day procession. Right: In Celtic tradition, fairies were closely related to Hawthorn, with the tree marking the entrance to the Otherworld (Hopkins, 2025)

This association was carried through into mainland Europe well into medieval times with branches of hawthorn tied above doorways to promote fertility and ward off evil spirits, and blossoms worn by women looking to attract a mate. Interestingly however, after the plague in the 1600’s, hawthorn blossoms were banished from homes, perhaps because of the flowers’ triethylamine content (a volatile compound that produces the smell of rotting flesh).

So, from blood red roses as tokens of love, as bribes, as symbols of secrecy and the great mysteries of life, to Hawthorn and its embodiment of fertility, safeguarding and as deterrent to the forces of evil, what is the point of all this cultural meaning, and does it mean anything at all? Maybe it is simply a display of our complex dependencies and reverence for these plants that have given us so much, maybe all of this is just a grand gesture of thanks and an ever more floral expression of our emergence from the same source energy. Maybe we cannot express this meaning in words and the only way to arrive closest is to quieten our minds and engage with our hedgerows again.

and for those stayers who read to the end here’s a route straight to that hedgerow.