Wild edible plant: Hawthorn and her gifts

22/4/2012

Dutch: Meidoorn - French: Aubépine - German: Weissdorn

She has tremendously beautiful edible flowers, and offers a lot of berries to eat as well, but right now, it's the leaves you can pick. Mind the thorns though; you won't see them at first sight, but they are definitely there: this plant is nature's barbed wire.
I've picked some now to infuse in vinegar and will add the flowers later on. But I like to nibble on them as well, as they are...

5 Comments

JS link

1/4/2013 08:53:03 am

I have heard that hawthorn exerts glycoside-type effects in the cardiovascular system, a positive inotropic agent in the heart similar to digitalis. If this is true, I would be very hesitant to eat it!

Leaf link

1/4/2013 05:14:02 pm

Well, yes and no.
The cardiovascular effects of hawthorn are believed to be the result of positive inotropic activity, the ability to increase the integrity of the blood vessel wall and improve coronary blood flow, and positive effects on oxygen utilization.
However, it's considered totally safe, not at all like digitalis. In fact hawthorn i's so safe that it's often described by medical doctors together with digitalis for people with serious heart problems. Hawthorn is considered so safe that you can use it over very long periods of time without side effects.

Hawthorn berries and leaf has been used as a safe food source for longer than we can remember. It's safe. It's healthy. It's good.

3/4/2013 06:43:00 am

The seeds of hawthorn are poisonous and must be carefully separated from the berries before eating.

http://www.eattheweeds.com/the-crataegus-clan-food-poison-2/

Leaf link

3/4/2013 07:26:09 am

JS, thanks for the article.
You are right, just like rosehip seeds (that should not be ingested for the same reason btw) , hawthorn seeds are toxic, but I can hardly see how you would eat the seeds. Either you cook the berry into jelly or jam or tea and you strain out the seeds (as it would be very unpalatable to have them in there, they are quite large compared to the actual fruit), or you'd eat them raw, which is quite mealy (they were used as a flour substitute during world war two) and the seeds are very hard. If you didn't know them and would put them in your mouth, I'm sure you would take them out again when chewing, because the seeds are too hard.

But in this article I was focusing on the young leaves, that are fully safe, just like the flowers.

Leaf link

3/4/2013 05:09:29 pm

Also, for those who are looking for good in-depth info on hawthorn, I suggest Henriette Kress' wonderful article on hawthorn for Plant Healer Magazine. Find it here: http://traditionsinwesternherbalism.org/learningherbs.html

I'd like to point out again that intoxicating yourself with apple seeds (same family as hawthorn, toxic for the same reasons) is more likely than getting poisoned from hawthorn seeds, as apple seeds are much softer. But how many times do we get warned about these eating apples?

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Wild edible plant: Hawthorn and her gifts

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