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Growing hawthorn in the Pacific Northwest

Hawthorn fruit is valued in traditional Chinese medicine for digestion, circulation, blood pressure, and anything to do with the heart. What types of hawthorn could I grow here in the Pacific Northwest that share the same medicinal properties as the ones used in China? I found some fruit on a tree in my neighborhood that reminds me of the dried hawthorn fruit we used, but someone told me this was a strawberry tree, not a hawthorn.

 

Strawberry tree is the common name for Arbutus unedo. Its very bumpy fruit is edible but not especially tasty (the species name means ‘I eat one,’ because one would be enough to convince the eater to seek a better food source!). Unlike deciduous hawthorns, Arbutus is evergreen. I can imagine, if you have only seen medicinal hawthorn fruit in dried form, it would be easy to mistake it for the strawberry tree’s fruit. Chinese hawthorn fruit has a comparatively smooth surface, though it is dotted with lenticels (that allow for exchange of gases between the outside world and the fruit’s interior).

We are not medical professionals, so we cannot address the medicinal benefits of any plant. However, there are several species of Crataegus (hawthorn) that are native to China, and some of these have fruit considered useful for the medicinal purposes you mention. The species that come up most often are Crataegus pinnatifida (shan zha) and Crataegus hupehensis. In the article “Hawthorn (Crataegus) Resources in China” (Taijun Guo and Peijuan Jiao, HortScience, Vol. 30(6), October 1995), there is a list of all the species that grow in various regions of China. The most useful ones are likely those that have sizeable fruit. There are also quite a few cultivated varieties, especially of C. pinnatifida, C. scabrifolia, and C. hupehensis. There is some history of hawthorn’s medicinal use in Europe as well, but with different species (mainly Crataegus monogyna–an unregulated noxious weed in King County– and Crataegus laevigata, previously called C. oxyacantha).

If you search online nursery inventory for the Chinese hawthorn species mentioned above, you will see that a cultivar of Crataegus pinnatifida called ‘Red Sun’ is available from Raintree Nursery in Washington, and One Green World in Oregon. You could certainly try growing it here, provided you have the right space for a 15-foot tree that needs full sun. When the fruits ripen (in the fall here), you could even scoop out the seeds, fill them with red bean paste, skewer them, and dip them in sugar syrup to make tanghulu, a treat for Chinese New Year.

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trees for waterlogged soils

Can you recommend some tree species (deciduous) that can have wet feet but
will also tolerate dry conditions in the summer? The recommendations should
be trees that are not too messy (no cottonwoods or alders, please) and not
too big. I would like to plant some trees near a swale in my yard – so they
could be sitting in soggy ground during the winter.

 

Following is a list of possibilities, most of which come from Water Conserving Plants
for the Pacific Northwest West of the Cascades
(by the N.W. Perennial
Alliance, 1993). The list includes only trees that 1) thrive in soils
which are waterlogged in the winter, and, 2) grow to less than 40 feet tall.

ACER (maple):
A. buergeranum (trident maple)
A. campestre (field maple)
A. ginnala (Amur maple)
A. circinatum (vine maple)
CORNUS nuttallii (western dogwood)
C. douglasii (black hawthorn)
C. monogyna
C. phaenopyrum (Washington thorn)
C. x lavallei (Carriere hawthorn)
HOVENIA dulcis (Japanese raisin tree)
MALUS fusca (Pacific crab apple)
NYSSA sylvatica (black gum)
OXYDENDRUM arboreum (sourwood)
PRUNUS (prune/plum/cherry):
P. virginiana var. melanocarpa (chokecherry)
P. emarginata (bitter cherry)
PYRUS (pear):
P. communis (common pear)
P. pyrifolia (Chinese pear, sand pear)
QUERCUS (oak):
Q. acutissima (sawtooth oak)
Q. imbricaria (shingle oak)
RHAMNUS purshiana (cascara)

diseases affecting Hawthorn trees

My Hawthorn tree has black spots on the leaves. Can you tell me what disease this might be? In general, what diseases affect Hawthorn trees?

 

To learn about diseases most common to Hawthorns in the Pacific Northwest, visit the Pacific Northwest Plant Disease Management Handbook and search on the word hawthorn. You will get a list of several diseases that commonly affect hawthorns; click on any of them for a full explanation.