The Hawthorn tree that's sooths & heals the heart ♥️

The Hawthorn also known as may flower
Is actually one of Britain's native achient trees or thorny shrubs.
It can grow up to 10 metres tall & it lives for a seriously long time the oldest ones on record have surpassed 700 years old

The tree tends to grow twisted its bark is greyish brown and has a lot of small scales
The branches are covered in these big angry thorns for its amour this trees ready for a fight for its fruits. The thorns have been used in the past for things like fish hooks and sowing needles.

The leaves are dark green on top and light green underneath and they ‘alternate’. They are up to 6cm long, have 5-7 deep lobes and teeth on the leaf tip.

In May flowers appear there white with 5 petals Sometimes they can be a pinkish color too. The flowers are beautiful but unfortunately smell quite putrid in medieval Hawthorns became associated with the smell of the plauge

In autumn the branches are packed full to the brim of these amazing deep red colored berry's birds and wildlife love these berry's and although there abundant always take your fair share to keep that balance between us and Nature. Plus the tree will prick you if you take to many

The hawthorns leaves flowers & berry's are edible and are well known for there abilities to help heal and strengthen the heart
For centuries, hawthorn berry has been used as an herbal remedy to treat things like high blood pressure, heart palpitations, anxiety, digestive problems even heart failure

The hawthorn leafs flowers and berries are packed full of antioxidants that strengthen blood vessels and even heal damaged vessel walls.

There also rich with vitamins such as
Vitamin b1
Magnesium
Calcium & iron

You can eat the leaves berries and flowers raw just remember to spit out the seed of the Berry because it contains a tiny bit of cyanide... Its not much if you accidentally eat a few it won't kill you but its probably best we try not to injest any cyanide if we can avoid it. Its OK to cook the berry's with the seeds and remove them after.

You can use them to make things like
Yea
Jam
Syrup
ketchup
The list goes on

You'll find it most commonly growing in hedgerows as a natural barrier or in woodland growing freely. You can still find a lot of single hawthorns on farmland. A lot of Farmers won’t cut them down because they believe its bad luck. This idea of it being bad luck goes back to the Folklore that these trees are under the protection of fairy's and the fairy might seek revenge if you cut it down. I don't know about you but if hate to be on the wrong side of a fairy.

In the olden days people would bring a globe of woven hawthorn into there homes to ask the fairy's to make sure the house wouldn't be burnt down.

People also believed that if you enhhaled the scents of the flowers in may deeply you could access the other world.

So if your looking for a herbal remedy to heal a heart or to sooth a worry one then hawthorn might just be the natural remedy for you