Hawthorn Blood Red

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Blood-red hawthorn (lat. Crataegus sanguinea) - a representative of the genus Hawthorn of the Pink family. Other names are blood-red hawthorn or Siberian hawthorn. In nature, it grows in Eastern Siberia, Western Siberia, Transbaikalia, the European part of Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China. It is cultivated as an ornamental and medicinal crop in Central Russia. Typical places are clearings, forest edges, dry rare forests, steppes and river floodplains. The average life span is 300-400 years.

Characteristics of culture

Blood-red hawthorn is a tall shrub or small tree up to 4-6 m high with a trunk covered with brown-gray or dark brown bark. Young shoots are hairy, later glabrous. The branches are purplish brown or blood red, with a distinct luster, with straight and hard spines, the length of which varies from 1.5 to 5 cm.

The buds are obtuse, ovoid, glabrous, covered with dark red scales with a light brown border. Leaves are dark green, obovate, ovate or rhombic, with an entire base and a sharp apex, 3-7-mylobal, alternate, sitting on short shoots, equipped with crescent or oblique-heart-shaped stipules. On the underside, the leaves are sparsely hairy, lighter in color.

The flowers are bisexual, medium-sized, white or pink, collected in dense multiflorous corymbose inflorescences, have hairy pedicels and falling filamentous bracts. Sepals are spherical or spherical-flattened, whole, sometimes with two teeth, oblong-triangular. Corolla divisible, yellowish white.

Fruits are blood-red or orange-yellow, short-ellipsoid or spherical, up to 1 cm in diameter, with a lagging calyx, edible, contain 2-5 sinuous-ribbed wrinkled seeds. The hawthorn blooms blood-red in May-June, the fruits ripen in August-September, sometimes in October. Begins fruiting in 7-15 years after planting.

The subtleties of growing

Like other members of the genus, blood-red hawthorn is unpretentious to growing conditions. It develops well on alluvial, pebble, sandy and even poorly cultivated soils. Does not accept strongly acidic and waterlogged soils, as well as close occurrence of groundwater. Do not grow hawthorn in lowlands with cold air stagnation and in areas flooded by melt water. Plants have a positive attitude towards sunlight, they do not tolerate thick shade. On such sites, trees give low and low-quality fruit yields and are affected by pests and diseases.

The hawthorn is propagated by blood-red root shoots and seeds. Cuttings are not used, since cuttings cannot boast a high rooting rate. Before sowing, the seeds are stratified for 7-8 months in wet peat crumb or sand with alternating temperatures (one week at a temperature of 2-5C, the second at 18C). Seeds are sown in the spring in the ridges. Embedding depth - 0.5 cm.

The soil is regularly moistened and freed from weeds. The first thinning is carried out in the phase of one true leaf, leaving a distance between seedlings of 2-3 cm; the second thinning - in the phase of 3-4 leaves with a distance of 4-5 cm. Closer to autumn, the seedlings are transplanted with a distance of 60-70 cm from each other, where they are grown for 2-3 years. For the winter, the seedlings are insulated. Hawthorns, propagated by seed, enter fruiting at 5-8 years.

Application

The blood-red hawthorn is a highly decorative plant, widely used in landscape design. The culture is suitable for landscaping city parks and gardens, as well as personal backyards. Flowers, leaves and fruits of blood-red hawthorn are used in medicine. The flowers are harvested at the very beginning of flowering, after which they are laid in a thin layer on cardboard and placed under a well-ventilated canopy. As soon as the raw material is completely dry, it is scattered into glass jars or wooden containers.

The fruits of the blood-red hawthorn are harvested at the time of full ripeness. You can collect both individual fruits and shields. The fruits are dried in the open sun or under a canopy, scattering a thin layer on a cloth or paper. Also, drying can be carried out in special drying ovens at a temperature of 40-70C. Dry fruits are stored in tight bags or plywood boxes for 3-5 years. The leaves of the blood-red hawthorn are used to prepare medicinal infusions and tea, they are rich in coffee, ursolic, neoholic and crateholic acids, as well as essential oils.

Preparations made on the basis of flowers, leaves or fruits of a plant are taken for diseases of the cardiovascular system, atherosclerosis, thyroid disorders and insomnia. Also, the drugs have a tonic effect, increase blood circulation and stimulate metabolism. Blood-red hawthorn wood is suitable for turning products, and the bark is for red dye used for dyeing fabrics. Fresh hawthorn fruits are used for making jam and jelly.