RED HAW
Flowers one-half natural size.
The leaves are ovate or nearly orbicular, coarsely toothed nearly to the base, usually 3 to 5 pairs of broad, shallow lobes. Both surfaces are hairy.
The flowers are often nearly an inch across, in compact clusters. They have about 20 cream-colored, densely hairy stamens.
The fruit, or the haw, is large, nearly ¾ inch across, bright crimson or scarlet in color. The edible sweet flesh is firm but mellow, surrounding 5 bony seeds. It is often used for making jelly.
The wood is strong, tough, heavy and hard, and is used for mallets, tool handles and such small articles.
The Washington thorn, Crataegus phaenopyrum Med., is a smaller tree, with bright red fruit, but its broad leaves are smooth and bright green. The flowers are small, in very large clusters, followed by small bright scarlet edible haws.
In the southern half of Illinois, growing on moist river bottoms, the green haw, Crataegus viridis L., becomes a tree 20 feet tall. The broad leaves are dark green and quite smooth. The fruit is small but produced in large clusters becoming bright red or orange-red as it ripens.
