Beware the Blackthorn Winter

There are many old rural sayings and bits of wisdom that often hold a kernel of truth to them, some of them don’t make much sense at all, others prove to be very useful and well worth paying heed to. One example of the latter is “Beware the Blackthorn Winter”.

Blackthorn prunus Spinosa is a native hedgerow plant and, although you might find it hard to believe if you’ve ever tried eating a raw Sloe (the common name for the fruit of the Blackthorn), it is the common ancestor to the Plum.

Sloes are bitter and tart to eat raw, leaving your whole mouth dry like a really, really strong cup of tea, frugivorous (fruit eating) birds don’t seem to notice this however and relish them, as they are full of Protein and Carbohydrates which are invaluable when preparing for long migrations to warmer climates ahead of the winter months.

Of course they are useful to us as the main ingredient in Sloe gin, i’ll post a recipe for this later in the year.

In spring Blackthorn proves its worth in another manner, by producing hundreds of thousands of delicate, fragrant white blossoms, loaded with pollen and nectar at a time when few other plants have fully bloomed, something which early emerging insects such as butterflies and bumblebees are very grateful for.

On the day I took the photos accompanying this article I was out for a walk with my partner Louise and her father, and she spotted a woozy looking bumblebee on the pavement, upon picking her up we found her to be a newly emerged Queen Buff-tail.

Louise crossed the road with the queen sat in her palm looking rather sleepy and tired, but when she smelt the fragrance of the Blackthorn blossoms her majesty perked up straight away. When placed on one of the blossoms she went straight to work with her long tongue lapping up nectar in what was probably her first meal after waking up from hibernation.

This week I’ve found myself worrying about this sleepy little bumblebee, as the weather has changed for the worse, this belies a dark side to the nature of the Blackthorn, reflected in the title of this article; ‘Beware the Blackthorn winter’.

Blackthorn, as well as being horribly prickly, has a dark reputation in English and Celtic mythology, indeed the word ‘strife’ is thought to come from the ancient Ogham name for Blackthorn; ‘Straif’, Ogham being a medieval tongue and precursor to the Celtic language as we know it now.

In witchcraft the thorns of the Blackthorn were used to stab ‘poppets’ (think voodoo dolls) and inflict curses. In legend they are called the ‘Dark Crone of the woods’ and supposedly will not grow over 13ft in height as they do not like to be so near to god.

Their tendency to come into bloom in March, often just before a downturn in the weather and a brief return to winter, seems to reinforce this reputation further, although a mundane reason is more likely; they have probably evolved to take advantage of earlier pollinators, they do continue to bloom until May or even June after all.

I hope that this sudden spell of bad weather hasn’t affected the Queen bee we found, or any other insects, they will have found somewhere to shelter I’m sure, but you can see how this saying came about and as I’m typing this the weather has noticeably calmed down and warmed up.

In the future I’ll write a bit more about the mythology of some of the flora and fauna you will encounter in the Northwest of England and might adopt this style of prose more. Please tell me what you think dear reader and why not share any little tid-bits of rural proverbs or sayings you might know?

“Of all the trees that grow so fair, Old England to adorn, Greater are none beneath the Sun Than Oak and Ash and Thorn.”
Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook’s Hill

A B-H