Weeping Hawthorn

Size, growth and what to expect

No source rates its growth, so our growth estimator treats it as a medium grower, like most of our hawthorns, about a foot and a half a year. It is a small tree of 10 to 26 feet.

White flowers a little over half an inch across open in March and April, one to three together. The haws ripen in July and August, about a third of an inch across, yellow, yellow blushed red or red. Birds and other wildlife eat hawthorn fruit, and the thorny branches shelter nesting birds.

Its home is dry pinewoods, open scrub and dry hammocks on sandy soil. It is most common in the Florida panhandle, where it grows in abundance in places, and it reaches into nearby Alabama and Georgia and east to South Carolina.

How to grow Weeping Hawthorn

Weeping hawthorn wants full sun or light shade and a sandy, well-drained soil. In the wild it grows on dry sand in pinewoods and scrub. Its fine thorns grow up to about an inch long, 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 southern hawthorns are. Clean the seed from the ripe fruit, and sow it outdoors in fall.

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.

Its flowers carry both male and female parts, so there are no male and female trees to pair. Hawthorns in general can suffer from rusts that spend part of their life on eastern redcedar, so keep it away from redcedars.