II2 
WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND TREES. 
June, and are succeeded by brown fruits, an inch or less across, 
which may be described as round, with a depressed top, which 
is ornamented with the remains of the calyx-lobes. They ripen 
in October or November. 
Hawthorn {Crafcegus oxyacantha). 
Though distributed as a wild tree throughout the length and 
breadth of the British Islands, we are all more familiar with the 
Hawthorn as planted material in the construction of hedges, 
and this is a use to which it has been put ever since land 
was plotted out and enclosed. For the word is Anglo-Saxon 
[hcEgthorn), and signifies hedge-thorn. The man in the street 
would say without hesitation that Hawthorn means the thorn 
that produces Haws, but the philologist would tell him that it 
is only a modern and erroneous practice to apply the name of 
the hedge to the fruit of the hedge- thorn. It is also Whitethorn, 
to make the distinction between its light-grey bark and that of 
the Blackthorn ; and May because of the period when it chiefly 
attracts attention. 
Where the Hawthorn is allowed its natural growth, it 
attains a height of forty feet, with a circumference between 
three and ten feet. Such a tree is represented in our photo- 
graph. On our commons, where in their youth the Hawthorns 
have to submit to much mutilation from browsing animals, 
their growth is spoiled ; but though some of these never 
become more than bushes tangled up with Blackthorn into 
small thickets, there are others that form a distinct bole 
and a round head of branches from ten to twenty feet high, 
which in late May or (more frequently) early June look like 
solid masses of snow. The characteristic of the tree which 
makes it so valuable as fencing material is found in its 
numerous branches, supporting a network of twigs so dense 
that even a hand may not be pushed among them without 
