DECIDUOUS TREES. 
441 
Fig. 148. 
a large dense bush; but, pruned by accident or 
design to a single stem, it forms one of the most 
beautiful and durable trees of the third rank that 
can be planted—interesting and valuable for its 
sweet-scented flowers in May, and for its fruit in 
autumn, which supplies food for some of the smaller 
birds during part of the winter. In hedges the 
hawthorn does not flower and fruit abundantly when 
closely and frequently clipped; but when the hedges 
are only cut at the sides, so as to be kept within bounds, and the 
summits are left untouched, they flower and fruit as freely as when 
trained as separate trees. The plant lives a century or two, and 
there are examples of it between forty and fifty feet in height, 
with trunks three feet in diameter at one foot from the ground.” 
It will not flourish in a wet, cold, or thin soil. 
The hawthorn may either be used as stocks for, or may be 
grafted upon, not only all the other thorns, but upon apple and 
pear trees. As an ornamental hedge-plant it is inferior in beauty 
in this country to the arbor-vitae and hemlock, except in its blos¬ 
soming time, and in strength to resist animals to the Osage orange. 
Sir Uvedale Price, one of the most distinguished of English 
writers on landscape gardening, especially recommends the haw¬ 
thorn to be used as a filling-in for a plantation of larger trees : “ As 
trees are frequently planted thick at first, with the intention of 
thinning them afterwards; and as this operation is almost always 
neglected ’ no more large trees ought to be planted than are intended 
finally to remain ; and the interstices should be filled up with haw¬ 
thorns and other low shrubs and trees.” The growth of the tree is 
more rambling than that of our best native thorns, and its outer 
branches, intercurving, and well covered either with flowers or 
leaves, often convey the impression of trees composed of garlands, 
blossoms, and leaves. The flowers are borne in greater profusion 
than on our American thorn-trees, and sport into a variety of colors. 
Fig. 147 is a portrait of a pair of hawthorns in the grounds of 
Ellwanger & Barry, at Rochester, which, in their blooming season, 
are remarkably pretty; the one on the right being a mass of double 
white blossoms, and the one on the left nearly as crowded with 
