What Are Those Trees Anyway??

Posted 4/14/08
by Jane Kashlak

I was driving down Townbank Road the other day, on the way home from the Acme. My mind was on food, and dinner. And then I saw them.

A field I never pay much attention to was transformed, almost overnight, into acres of brilliant white.

Hawthorns.

You see them this time of year, along with the forsythias, dotting roadways in South Jersey. People often think they're dogwoods or cherry or pear trees. But those trees don't have prickly thorns.

People might not like the hawthorn's thorns, but small birds do. Those thorns protect them from big, bad predators.

We have several wild hawthorns that sprang up on our property on their own. We look forward to their blooms every spring. We tried to plant more hawthorns, but to no avail. They put down roots only on their own terms.

Maybe that's why hawthorns are said to be mystical trees, places where fairies hang out and magic happens. Woe is he who dares to uproot one or damage one. Lucky is he who carefully tends a hawthorn, or so the legend goes.

One old tradition had people hanging ribbons on the blooming hawthorn, to make special wishes - the start of the English tradition of the Maypole. It was supposed to be a lucky time.

Here in Cape May, it's a wee bit warmer than England and the hawthorn trees bloom in April, not May. But we'll take our luck whenever we can get it.

Remind me to water our hawthorn trees this summer.