One-seed hawthorn seeds

Common hawthorn, one-seed hawthorn, or single-seeded hawthorn / Crataegus monogyna - is a shrub or tree 3-6, less often up to 8-12 m high, with a rounded tent-shaped or wide pyramidal, fairly symmetrical crown. The branches are brownish-gray; branches are reddish-brown or cherry-colored; shoots are bare or initially densely hairy. The spines are few, about 1 cm long, often absent; leafy spines are almost not developed.

Individual specimens of this species are known at the age of two hundred to three hundred years, with a height of 17-18 m, with a crown diameter of up to 18-20 m and a trunk girth of up to 2.5-3 m.

The buds are broadly ovate-conical, 3-5 mm long. The leaves are glossy, dark, olive-green above, light green below. On fruiting shoots, the lower leaves are obovate to oblong-ovate, three-incised or coarsely toothed at the apex; the upper ones are up to 4-4.5 cm long and wide, three- or five-parted, often with very asymmetrically located lobes, the latter are blunt, with a short mounted cartilaginous tip, entire edges or near the apex with few teeth, oval in outline.

The leaves of sterile shoots are larger, 5-3-deeply divided or even almost dissected, with spaced lobes, unevenly along the edges, often incised-toothed. Petioles 1-2 cm long, grooved; stipules are sickle-shaped, semi-cordate, glandular-serrate.

The inflorescences are erect, up to 5 cm in diameter, quite compact, 10-18-flowered, with bare or sparsely hairy axes, pedicels and hypanthia. Flowers 1.5 cm in diameter, with white petals; sepals oblong-triangular or broadly ovate with a blunt tip, reflexed at the fruit; twenty stamens, with red anthers; column one.

The fruit is a red or brownish-red, less often yellow apple, broadly ovoid or broadly ellipsoid in shape, 7-10 mm long. There is one bone, up to 7 mm long, 5 mm wide, somewhat compressed and chipped on the sides, with two to three shallow grooves on the dorsal side.

Flowering in May - June. Fruiting in September.

Used as a fruit, melliferous, medicinal and ornamental plant.

For a long time they have been used in gardens and parks, in alley plantings (tall forms) and especially for hedges. Excellent for cutting; has great shoot-forming ability.