Fire by hand drill

Fire by hand drill

Thursday, 17 November 2011

Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna)




Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna)

This is a great little tree which is very common in hedge rows. It is a very useful resource.

Food.

This tree has an edible berry which can persist through the winter if the birds don’t eat them first. The pip is hard and should be discarded. The young leaves are also edible. Hawthorn thickets are a great place to trap, as rabbits feel safe in them. You can make fishing hooks, harpoon points from the green thorns, the dead ones are too brittle to be of use. Good for throwing sticks too.

Materials

The hawthorn burns very well when seasoned and created nice embers for cooking. You can usually find a lot of kindling branches under the crown, still attached, dead and dry. The wood is hard and dense and has been used for walking sticks and cudgels/priests. The wood has quite short fibres so is not good in flex.

2 comments:

Halfhippie.com said...

I do this same kind of stuff in Western North Carolina in the US... I think our climates are actually quite similar. Thanks for giving me another blog to follow =)

Mark said...

One of my favourite trees the Hawthorn, the wood is great to carve when fresh cut also has a nice pinkish tinge to it which adds a nice effect to spoons and bowls.