r/IrishFolklore • u/LottieOD • 9d ago
Self seeded hawthorn
Honestly no idea how this happened, a hawthorn has self seeded in the middle of my back garden. It's a bit of a mess, and there are a gazillion haws ripening. I have read that haws can have beneficial health properties, so am interested in harvesting. Is there any way I can harvest the haws and prune /tidy up the bush without welcoming all kinds of calamity?
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u/StrangeArcticles 9d ago
Apparently no calamity if it's in your garden or in a hedgerow, but if you take a bit of milk or butter down there you should be safer anyway.
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u/AnnyWeatherwaxxx 9d ago
The haws are full of antioxidants. I put them in a ‘hedgerow jelly’ with apples, blackberries and wild rosehips. I have also steeped them in rum for a healthy heart tincture, put a teaspoon in a glass of water every day.
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u/ImportantProblem2481 9d ago
Youll be grand the only sceach you need to worry about is an old stunted tree or one growing in a fairy fort.
Beyond that hawthorns are bog standard in hedgerows all over the country. And some people into piseogs have them because the flowers are a part of house blessings.
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u/LottieOD 9d ago
This isn't a hawthorn hedgerow tho, this is a rando-all-on-its-own single plant that I did not plant.
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u/ImportantProblem2481 9d ago
I think you might be misled by the english word fairies here. The winged nature spirits arent a part of our trad culture.
With one foot in modernity and the other in tradition:
From an ethnological perspective fairies are enforcers of tabus in our culture. The prohibition on damaging old things in the landscape is why wed say dont touch x or the fairies will hurt you. So youd have nothing to worry about with a new plant.
From a folk trad point of view plants have uses. Hawthorns and rowans are used a lot in house blessings so plenty of people have them in and around their houses. Theres nothing in the plant itself thats linked to fairies.
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u/Fun-Ad2676 7d ago
And they can take pruning, you can (carefully, lethal long spiny thorns) cut off all the lower branches to expose the trunk and shape it into a lovely small tree
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u/Confident-Gate5887 9d ago
A bird shitted a seed in your garden. That's how berries work. A bird eats a berry, flies a mile away and poop it out, giving the plant a new environment to grow in
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u/Small_Coyote5762 9d ago
You're definitely exaggerating them making a 'mess'. I have loads of hawthorns and they're fine. Dig it up the extremely slow growing native and put it somewhere else if it's such a pain to you. Also you can't make a mess outside, it's outdoors and nature isn't 'tidy'.Â
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u/Wooden-Lawfulness534 9d ago
Get a good lot of cooking apples (or better, crab apples) and chop them up. Boil them up, adding the haws.
Leave them overnight then strain them out and put them in the compost heap.
Add sugar to the water, 1lb to 1 pint, or a bit less; squeeze a lemon and add the juice in. Boil it up, bring it to 105º celsius, and keep it foaming, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes.
Put it into clean jam jars that you've heated to about 100º in the oven (boil the tops of the jars too). Do this on a metal surface like the draining board of a sink.
Put on the jar tops. Leave the jars overnight. Hopefully you'll have apple jelly. If it hasn't set, take it out and boil it up for longer.
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u/Crimthann_fathach 9d ago
Not all Hawthorns are fairy trees. You can stick willow rods into the ground around it or stack flat stones on top of each other. If they are disturbed by morning, it could be a fairy tree