Impenetrable forest-edge thickets of dense, gnarly hawthorns are crucial wildlife lifesavers, especially in autumn and winter. Though these shrubs and small trees comprise dozens of species, Canada’s most widespread, reaching from the east coast to the Rockies, is the fireberry hawthorn, typically two to three metres tall.
Fireberry hawthorn is heavily armed with sharp thorns up to seven centimetres long. This protects it from most browsers, and offers a safe haven from predators for many small creatures, includ- ing exhausted birds taking a break during fall migration. After leaf drop, thorn bushes often reveal the nests of gray catbirds, cedar waxwings, rose-breasted grosbeaks, brown thrashers, hummingbirds, and other birds that habitually reside in the shrub’s tangled branches earlier in the year.
Between late August and October, the shrub becomes heavily laden with deep red, marble-sized fruits, called haws, resembling mini-apples. The berries develop from small clusters of pretty white flowers that are pollinated by bees, flies, and butterflies in late May and early June.
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Unlike blueberries, raspberries, and other summer sweets, most wild fruits ripen during fall migration. Many, such as elderberry and alder-leaf buckthorn berries, are high in fat, allowing birds to refuel on their way south; haws and other low-fat fruits are mostly ignored until the richer fare is gone. But with so little sugar and lipids, which attract microbes, they tend not to rot or fall, and provide vital late autumn and winter sustenance for ruffed grouse, chickadees, nuthatches, pine grosbeaks, and other wildlife.
In the past, humans also used haws as survival food, a legacy nodded to by the nickname “haweaters,” proudly embraced by Ontario’s Manitoulin Islanders. Today, the thin-fleshed fruits, which surround several small nutlets, are used to make jellies, syrup, tea, and even beer. Fireberry haws, pulpier than most varieties, are mellow and tasty when ripe.
This article was originally published in the Sept./Oct. 2024 issue of Cottage Life.
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