The view from below
There are 200 different species of hawthorn in the world, and the fruits of all Crataegus spp. are edible. They range in flavor from palatable to tasty, although that’s also a factor of your hunger. (They make a great tea too.)
But hawthorn berries are tricky to process: how do you separate many seeds inside from the good stuff? At about 1:50 into the video, U.K. forager Ray Mears offers an ingenious solution.
Hawthorn is full of of flavonoids — antioxidants — and its great for the heart. Many people make tinctures of hawthorn berries to take for prolonged stretches as a cardiovascular tonic. It’s popular in Europe and China for lowering blood pressure.
Hawthorn tree
Hawthorn is a big shrub or small tree that comes in lots of different forms. All have intense thorns on the branches, though some can appear hidden until you look closely. Click here for a link to a wonderful U.K. web site that has amazingly clear photos of leaves and thorns.The berries look a lot like rose hips.
If you’re wondering about tincturing hawthorn, here’s a recipe from Gregory Tilford’s book, “From Earth to Herbalist”: Crush fresh berries and use 60% alcohol solution, at one part hawthorn to two parts alcohol.
[...] The dose is 15 to 30 drops (of a medicine dropper) up to four times per day for acute conditions, tapering to two to three times per day after three weeks, according to Moore. I’ve written about how to make hawthorn medicine with the berries using glycerin instead of alcohol, here; how eating the berries helped heal my dog’s erratic heartbeat, here; and how to prepare the berries as food here. [...]
Ah too bad the video was removed by whomever original post on you tube.
[...] the photo here, you see I’m pouring glycerin into a hawthorn berry medicine I was making. Hawthorn is in demand in my world: Not only did my dog come down with a heart arrhythmia, but recently so [...]
[...] For info on how to identify hawthorn, and a tincture recipe, click here. [...]
[...] berry clusters ripe for the picking at this very moment. From a distance you might think it’s hawthorn, to whom it is in fact related — botanists place both in the rose family and the apple [...]
I use Hawthorn berry extract to help reduce my cholestral. I will be finding out if it works this friday when I get some tests back.
Tom,
I’ve actually tried using a rotary press and had no luck with it. It might be that the one I was using was too rickety to exert much pressure, but I found there was a big space between the blade and the sludge of berry mush and nothing to push it through.
Yes, hawthorn is high in pectin, according to the Peterson Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants.
~ Becky
Nice video.
I especially liked the harvesting method.
I think a rotary food press would separate the juice from the pulp more efficiently.
Does anyone know if hawthorn berries are high in natural pectin? I’m just wondering what makes them jell up on their own.
Patrick,
You have a wonderful blog! Thanks for stopping by here to say hello. Your link here is the first I’ve seen of the urbanibalism folks, but we certainly seem to be surfing that same thought-wave in the ocean of the collective unconscious, don’t we? Seems they are in Amsterdam, and I am in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. And you are in Australia, right?! I love the internet!
have you met these guys?
http://www.urbanibalism.org/
hi becky, u seem to fly in ure nu cloth.***
thanks for posting this, a great video foraging resource.