As an herbalist, one of my favorite fall traditions is harvesting hawthorn berries. Harvest or not, I adore the beauty of bare-limbed hawthorns laden with red/black berries against the matte grey sky or dusk of crisp fall evenings. Black hawthorn is a small, deciduous tree/shrub of the Rose Family (Rosaceae). Hawthorns have an attractive architecture, akin to hazelnut or mountain mahogany. The berries are clusters of pomes, which ripen red, or in the case of Crataegus douglasii: dark black. The berries are a marriage between a semi-sweet crab apple and a rose hip. Hawthorn flowers are panicles of white, cupped 5 petaled florets, with yellow stamens and anthers, similar in shape to wild rose. Black hawthorns (and hawthorn’s in general) are more abundant in the Pacific Northwest, but their range …
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