In article , kate
 wrote:

> Sheldon wrote:
> > Billy wrote:
> > 
> >>I have a hawthorn (Crataegus oxyacantha a.k.a. Crataegus laevigata). It
> >>is only 18" high. I want advice on shrubing it out (I
don't want a tree)
> >>and on methods to optimize the harvesting of its' leaves.
> > 
> > 
> > With an 18" hawhorne if you're over 40 years old you probably don't
> > need to worry about harvesting many leaves.  And besides, hawthorne
> > leaves are small and light, even from a mature 20" tall tree you won't
> > collect more than a bushel, more like a quart.  I have a 20'
> > hawthorne, its leaves shrivel on the tree and drop slowly over many
> > weeks, they blow away before many accumulate.  But with a 18" seedling
> > you really don't need to concern yourself until it reaches about 8'...
> > at least another 15 years.
> 
> I'm guessing he's wanting the leaves for herbal stuff, but it's the 
> berries and the flowers that are used primarily for heart issues.
> 
> Don't know about keeping them shrubs, but I'm planning on trying it.
> 
> Kate

The leaves are included in alternate remedy food supplements even though
having no potency because it's more expensive to process the fruit into an
herbal product, even though it's the fruit that has the main chemical
ingredients thought maybe to assist in heart disease -- pharmaceutical
grade extract of the FRUIT, not the leaves, is not entirely ruled out for
some extremely slight benefit may exist for cardiovascular disease IF it
is used in conjunction with and supplementary to conventional treatment.
There's also a recurring belief that as an herb it somehow benefits
diabetes, but doubleblind studies have ruled that one out for sure.
However, the leaves are a tobacco substitute. 

What is bought in the healthfood stores is usually derived from the
cheapest hawthorn source, C. ambigua. Since a tincture should derive from
C. oxyacantha to have any chacne of possessing the suspected benefit,
you'd either have to get it from a German phramaceutical source with
doctor prescription, or make the tincture yourself from the requisit
species.

For antioxidant content, hawthorne berries rank right up there with
blueberries for just generally healthful content. If harvested after
autumn's first freeze they're almost as sweet as apples, grainy and seedy
but no longer bitter (they can be harvested before first freeze then
frozen off in the freezer which has the same sweetening effect; waiting
for after first freeze can mean competing with birds and squirrels who
take a late-in-the-year liking to them). They can be steamed & sieved for
the pulp to make wonderful jams or jellies or syrup. Too much seed to eat
them as fresh fruit though they don't taste bad even raw.

-paghat the ratgirl
-- 
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