Hawthorn

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

High

As a honey crop

Minor honey crop — a surplus only locally or occasionally

Which bees, and why

Open shallow flowers in dense flat clusters — accessible to everything, and efficient to work because a bee can move across dozens without flying.

Flowering

In flower

May to June (northern hemisphere)

The old name 'may' refers to the flowering month, and blossom timing has shifted noticeably earlier in recent decades.

When nectar flows

A heavy but capricious flow. Hawthorn yields a real surplus only in some years and some places, and beekeepers regard a genuine hawthorn honey crop as a piece of luck.

Year-to-year variation

One of the most variable nectar sources in the temperate flora. Warm humid weather during the short bloom is required, and most years do not provide it.

What it does to the honey

In the rare years it yields a surplus, hawthorn honey is amber, strong and distinctly nutty with an almond note. More usually it contributes weight and depth to a May wildflower honey.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun to partial shade, almost any soil, extremely tough and wind-tolerant.

Size

5-12 m as a tree; kept at 1-3 m as a managed hedge.

Native range

Europe, north-west Africa and western Asia.

Suits

Hedgerow, Large gardens, Small gardens

Maintenance, and the bit that matters

This is the single most consequential maintenance decision in the whole plant catalogue. Annual mechanical flailing of hedgerows — the normal agricultural practice — removes the flowers and the haws entirely across enormous areas of countryside. Cutting a third of the hedge each year restores both.

• The standard hedging plant of temperate Europe — cheap as bare-root whips and quick to establish.
• Cut hedges on a two or three-year rotation rather than annually. Hawthorn flowers on second-year wood, so an annually flailed hedge never flowers and never fruits.
• Tolerates hard cutting and exposure, including coastal wind and pollution.

What it looks like

A thorny deciduous shrub or small tree with deeply lobed leaves and dense flat-topped clusters of white five-petalled flowers, followed by red haws. The scent is strong and distinctly unlike other blossom — musty and sweet at once.