Photo: Charles Edward Faxon, Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Pear Hawthorn

Crataegus calpodendron

Also called late hawthorn, sugar hawthorn, urn-tree hawthorn.

One of the last hawthorns to bloom and one of the most shade-tolerant, a vase-shaped small tree with white flowers into June and small orange-red haws.

Tolerates shadeShowy flowersWildlife valueErosion control

Type: Small tree
Mature height: 7–23 ft
USDA zones: 4–8
Growth rate: Slow
Sun: Full, Part, Shade
Soil moisture: Average
Grows wild in: The forest understory, rich moist slopes, stream banks, old fields and edges
Native range: 26 states, north to Minnesota, south to Louisiana and west to Nebraska
List all 26
Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin
See what is native in your state

Hardiness zones Find your zone by ZIP code

Pear hawthorn is a thorny shrub or small tree of eastern woods, from Minnesota and Ontario south to Georgia and east Texas. It blooms late for a hawthorn, after nearly all the others, and its small, oval haws feed birds in fall. Few hawthorns take as much shade, and plants in the forest understory keep flowering for years. Minnesota lists it as a species of special concern, and NatureServe ranks it critically imperiled in Kansas, New Jersey, Virginia and West Virginia. It serves to hold banks and to shield soil from wind and water erosion. Plant it at a woodland edge or in a gap among trees, where it can bloom after the other hawthorns have finished.

Size, growth and what to expect

Pear hawthorn grows slowly, about a foot a year in our growth estimator, and its seedlings cannot keep pace with young forest trees. It is a large shrub or small tree of 7 to 23 feet. In the open it grows several arching trunks and a vase shape, while plants in forest shade stay single-stemmed and 7 to 10 feet tall.

Clusters of 12 to 45 white flowers with pink or red anthers open late, in early May in the South and into mid-June in the North. The haws ripen orange-red to scarlet in September and October, oval, soft and only a quarter to a third of an inch long. Birds eat them and spread the seeds.

It grows in moist hardwood forests, open woods, thickets, stream banks, fencerows and field edges, on loamy soils. It shuns fire-swept prairies and savannas. Under a dense canopy of sugar maple it cannot reproduce, so it depends on gaps and edges.

How to grow Pear Hawthorn

Pear hawthorn grows in part shade or full sun, and it takes more shade than most hawthorns. Its seedlings need a gap or an edge with some sun. Give it a moist, loamy soil that drains well, not an active floodplain, fine silt or loose sand. Its thorns grow up to about 2 inches long, and old trunks carry clusters of them, so keep it back from paths. Set trees 15 feet apart, and keep each one 15 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. It is sown as other hawthorns are. Sow the cleaned seed outdoors in fall. Many seedlings may wait until the second spring.

Water weekly through the first summer, and in dry spells for the next two. Deer browse hawthorn leaves and twigs and rabbits gnaw young bark, so cage each sapling for its first three years.

Most pear hawthorns reproduce sexually, and such hawthorns reject their own pollen, so plant two or more from different seed. Bees and similar insects are thought to carry the pollen. Hawthorns in general can suffer from rusts that spend part of their life on eastern redcedar, so keep it away from redcedars.

Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.

Sources (16)