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PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
that is most delicate and refreshing. But not only for its 
beauty is the Hawthorn a favourite tree, but also for its many 
pleasant associations—it is essentially the May tree, the tree 
that tells that winter is really past, and that summer has fairly 
begun. Hear Spenser— 
“ Thilke same season, when all is yclade 
With pleasaunce ; the ground with Grasse, the woods 
With greene leaves, the bushes with blooming buds. 
Youngthes folke now flocken in everywhere 
To gather May-buskets and smelling Brere; 
And home they hasten the postes to dight, 
And all the kirk-pillours eare day-light, 
With Hawthorne buds, and sweet Eglantine, 
And girlondes of Roses, and soppes-in-wine.” 
Shepherd's Calendar — May, 
Yet in spite of its pretty name, and in spite of the poets, 
the Hawthorn now seldom flowers till June, and I should 
suppose it is never in flower on May Day, 1 except perhaps in 
Devonshire and Cornwall; and it is very doubtful if it ever 
were so found, except in these southern counties, though 
some fancy that the times of flowering of several of our flowers 
are changed, and in some instances largely changed. But 
“ it was an old custom in Suffolk, in most of the farmhouses, 
that any servant who could bring in a branch of Hawthorn 
in full blossom on the ist of May was entitled to a dish of 
cream for breakfast. This custom is now disused, not so 
much from the reluctance of the masters to give the reward, 
as from the inability of the servants to find the Whitethorn 
in flower.”— Brand’s Antiquities . 2 Even those who might 
not see the beauty of an old Thorn tree, have found its uses 
as one of the very few trees that will grow thick in the most 
exposed places, and so give pleasant shade and shelter in 
1 “Gilbert White in his ‘Naturalists’ Calendar’ as the result of observa¬ 
tions taken from 1768 to 1793 puts down the flowering of the Hawthorn 
as occurring in different years upon dates so widely apart as the twentieth 
of April and the eleventh of June.”— Milner’s Country Pleasures , p. 83. 
2 In 1895 it was in flower in the last week of April, 
