Our Better Nature: Leprechaun Trees

My earliest memory of St. Patrick’s Day is how much it irritated my mother, who holds dual Irish-American citizenship and strongly identifies with her Celtic roots. It was not the day itself that got her Irish up, so to speak, but rather the way it was depicted in popular culture: Green-beer drink specials at the bars, and St. Patrick’s Day sales in every store, all too often endorsed by grinning, green-clad, marginally sober leprechauns.

Mom stuck to the facts about Ireland and wanted her children to know about its poets, playwrights, and history. My aunts and uncles, though, sometimes regaled us kids with stories of the fairy-folk, including leprechauns, who reportedly shunned green and always dressed in red. Leprechauns gave me nightmares. According to my relatives, you didn’t want those little guys endorsing your breakfast cereal. They might look cute, but if you made them mad, which reportedly wasn’t hard to do, they were likely to kidnap or cripple you, steal your baby out of the crib, or worse. And one of the surest ways to incur their wrath was to cut down their favorite tree, the hawthorn.

Native to Europe and northern Asia as well as to North America, the hawthorn is a slow-growing, short-maturing (20-25’) tree with prodigious thorns that are strong enough to puncture tractor tires. Experts disagree on the number of species (of hawthorns, not tires) worldwide; estimates range from hundreds to thousands. To be on the safe side, many references simply designate all hawthorns as Crataegus spp. Since they cannot tolerate shade, they’re often found in fencerows and pastures, where lucky specimens may live for a century or more.

It is these large, older, solitary hawthorn trees that have often been associated with fairy-folk in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and other parts of western Europe having Celtic heritage. Even today in many places, local laws protect hawthorn trees from being razed for road work or other development, and it is not hard to find people who still feel it is bad luck to cut down such a tree.

Many cultures around the world have a long tradition of various types of “little people.” Oftentimes each type will look after a certain habitat, or even a specific plant or animal species. I’m not sure why the Celtic fairies were so touchy about hawthorns. Perhaps they liked the fruit, or felt safe among their thorns, but I suspect it is because hawthorn protected them against heart disease, thus allowing them to live the unnaturally long lives they were reputed to enjoy.

Hawthorn blooms in April through May, when pastures and meadows are festooned with the brilliant white blossoms. These fragrant and attractive flowers have a rich history, dating back possibly over a thousand years, of medicinal use as cardiac tonic. Today, hawthorn flowers, along with the leaves, are dried and made into capsules, and also packaged as tea.

As western culture supplanted, and in many cases obliterated, indigenous cultures, Native wisdom was often discounted and ridiculed. While this trend has not yet reversed, it has certainly slowed these days, as more and more “folk remedies” are proven by science to be effective. Ginkgo, St. John’s wort, quinine and digitalis are just a few examples of traditional medicine vindicated through research.

While hawthorn hasn’t yet been endorsed by the American Medical Association, studies have shown that it does have beneficial cardiac effects. An article in the July 2002 issue of the Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing states that hawthorn “…consistently demonstrates its ability to improve exercise tolerance and symptoms of mild to moderate heart failure.” Numerous other studies have come to similar conclusions.

A member of the rose family, hawthorn is related to apples, juneberries, and raspberries, so it’s not surprising its fruit is edible. Hawthorn berries, sometimes called thorn apples, haws, or haw apples, vary from tree to tree in terms of palatability. Haws are good for making jelly — in fact, I make some every fall — and at times they were an important food source for native peoples and pioneers. Hawthorn wood is very hard and rot-resistant, and is prized for tool handles, fence posts, and firewood.

Hawthorn is a hardy, low-maintenance tree that will thrive from Maine to Minnesota, and south to the Gulf coast. It also grows well in western Washington and Oregon, and northwestern California. They’re a great addition to any landscape, and are sure to attract pollinators and birds, if not fairies.

Cultivars such as ‘Paul’s Scarlet’ have pink petals, and others like ‘Winter King’ hold their fruit long into the winter. A number of thornless varieties are available, including ‘Ohio Pioneer.’ Hawthorns establish easily, and tolerate of a wide range of soil types and pH, as well as road salt and compaction. Even if you don’t ingest hawthorn flowers or leaves, watching songbirds nest in the branches and eat the fruit is likely to do your heart good.

Fables can be tricky to interpret. In the same way that catastrophe befalling those who try to chase a leprechaun to the rainbow’s end to steal their gold is a cautionary tale against get-rich-quick schemes, perhaps the advice against chopping down a hawthorn is because its flowers are important to our health. On the other hand, maybe it’s just to spare us from sharp thorns.