Downy Hawthorn

Size, growth and what to expect

Downy hawthorn grows at a moderate pace, so our growth estimator gives it about a foot and a half a year. It reaches 20 to 40 feet and about as wide, on a short trunk with silvery, scaly bark. Hawthorns grown from seed take 5 to 8 years to bear fruit.

Flat clusters of white flowers about an inch across open in April and May, among the first hawthorns to bloom. The fruit is a red, downy haw up to an inch across that ripens in August and September and falls early. Its flesh is dry, mealy and only mildly tart. Songbirds, quail, wild turkeys and small mammals eat it. Hummingbirds and butterflies visit the flowers for nectar.

It grows wild west of the Appalachians, from eastern South Dakota and southwestern Ontario to southern Texas and central Alabama. It favors woodland edges, floodplain thickets, sandy hillsides and old fields. Scattered records farther east are misidentified plants or recent introductions.

How to grow Downy Hawthorn

Downy hawthorn does best in full sun on a moist, fertile soil, and it takes part shade. It tolerates heavy clay, wet ground, drought and alkaline soil, but not salt air. Plant it away from eastern red cedar, which carries the rusts that attack it. Its thorns are sharp, so keep it back from paths and play areas. Set trees 20 feet apart, and keep each one 20 feet from a wall and 15 feet from overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them dormant, from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the root flare at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the trunk. Seed needs a warm spell and then a long cold one. Sow cleaned seed outdoors in fall, and expect many seedlings only in the second spring. For a spring sowing, keep it damp at room temperature for two to four months, then in the refrigerator for four to six months.

Water weekly through the first summer, and in dry spells for the next two. Deer do browse hawthorn leaves and twigs, so cage each sapling for its first three years. It takes hard pruning and sprouts again from old wood, so it can be kept as a hedge. Prune in winter or early spring, as for other hawthorns.

Its flowers carry both male and female parts, and their scent, sometimes unpleasant, draws the midges that pollinate them. Downy hawthorn needs pollen from another tree to set fruit, so plant two or more from different seed. Midges drawn by the scent carry the pollen. The leaves are prone to cedar-hawthorn rust, scab and leaf blight, and by late summer they are often battered and drop early. Fire blight, leaf spots, scale and mites also trouble it.