Hawthorns are short, thorny trees that were once used to form thick hedges
between pastures in Europe. The trees bloom once or twice a year and are
covered with many small flowers. Hawthorns are in the Rose family and
the fruit is a "pome" that looks like an apple or a rose hip.
The fruits are edible but they have a bad taste and are generally only
used for making alcohol. There are roughly 200 species of hawthorns and
those species have hundreds of named varieties, making identification
Hawthorns have become a problem at Reed because birds and small mammals
spread the seeds through the canyon, where the trees have become an invasive
species. The college is trying to decrease the number of hawthorns as part
of an ongoing canyon restoration.