Hawthorn Berry Supplements:
1000mg Whole Berry or 3500mg 7:1 Extract?

Hawthorn capsules, tablets, powder or tea: what each format is

Seen hawthorn tablets, a loose hawthorn powder or a bag of dried hawthorn herb and wondered how they compare with a capsule? A capsule holds a measured powder or extract inside a shell, and our three hawthorn pouches hold 500mg in every capsule, milled berry or extract 3 4. A tablet is that powder pressed with binders.

Loose powder is weighed by the spoon, with its serving printed on its own pack, and hawthorn tea is one of the two food uses the RHS names for the haws, beside jelly 1. We sell capsules only, so this guide compares our two kinds of capsule, and whatever the format the figure to hold is the milligrams of hawthorn in one serving and what you pay for it.

Hawthorn berry in a multivitamin: our organic women’s multivitamin

Prefer hawthorn berry as one part of a wider daily routine? Our Organic Women Multivitamin includes 100mg of organic hawthorn berry in every two capsules, beside 8 vitamins and 7 minerals from organic plant blends, at about 33p a serving 7. Our multivitamin guide sets it beside our other multivitamins.

So here’s the answer to the question the fronts raise: a single capsule from any of our hawthorn pouches holds 500mg, milled berry in the two berry pouches and, in the third, an extract made from 3,500mg of dried hawthorn berries 3 4. A 7:1 extract starts from the dried fruit: seven parts of dried berry go into one part of extract, which is how 3,500mg becomes 500mg.

The extract’s panel gives its concentration as a ratio, 7:1, so when you set it beside another extract, the 3,500mg berry equivalent is its figure to compare 4. Beside a whole-berry pouch, the like-for-like figure is the capsule: 500mg of extract against 500mg of milled berry. The berry pouches print no ratio at all, because nothing has been extracted: the label states the weight of the berry itself 3.

Why the panel prints no NRV, and what the organic leaf’s code tells you

Each hawthorn panel carries two asterisks in the %NRV column. A Nutrient Reference Value is the daily amount a UK label measures a vitamin or mineral against, and none exists for hawthorn, so the panel gives you milligrams and leaves it there; milligrams of the same kind are what to compare 3 4.

Is it organic? Yes: the leaf on every pouch is the organic logo, and the code printed with it, SK-BIO-003, names the certifier, Biokont CZ, a control body for organic operators in Slovakia; non-UK organic food usually carries a code in that XX-BIO-XXX form 3 4 8 9. The words Non-EU Agriculture beside the leaf mean the agricultural ingredients were farmed outside the EU 10.

Ingredients are listed in order of weight, with the main ingredient first 11. On the three hawthorn pouches that is the hawthorn: organic hawthorn berry powder, or organic hawthorn berry 7:1 extract, then the hypromellose shell, then organic brown rice flour 3 4. The rice flour is a plant filler: it makes up the capsule’s volume and keeps the powder flowing, and in the multivitamin, where hawthorn is one ingredient among many, it comes first 7.

The common hawthorn, Crataegus monogyna, is a rounded deciduous tree of the rose family, native to Britain and Ireland, with thorny branches and glossy, deeply lobed leaves that turn gold in the autumn 1. It can reach 10 to 15 metres, though most of the hawthorns you pass are kept to hedge height 1 2, and it is very common throughout Britain except in the extreme north 5.

The name is Old English. Hawthorn goes back to hagathorn, from haga, a hedge, and thorn: the thorn of the hedge, which Merriam-Webster takes to have been the characteristic hedge plant of the early Germanic world 12. The red berries are the haws, which give the tree its common name, and haw itself comes from the Old English word for a hedge, so the one word names both the hedge and its fruit 13 14.

The double meaning is fitting. Because of its thorns, hawthorn has for centuries been planted as a barrier that keeps farm animals in, long before post and wire fences 13 14. The enclosure of England’s open fields brought a wave of hedge planting that peaked between 1750 and 1820 15, and the new hedges were largely hawthorn, often nothing else, and many of them still stand; enclosure as a whole added some 200,000 new miles of hedgerow 15.

The Countryside Survey of 2007 estimated 402,000 kilometres of managed hedgerow in England, and two thirds of the country has been hedged for a thousand years or more 16. A single hawthorn is home to over 300 different species of insects 17.

One detail explains why many people have never seen a hawthorn in full bloom: it flowers only on second-year growth, so a hedge trimmed every year rarely blooms, while a hawthorn left to grow into a tree is white from top to bottom in May 1 14. That tree in full flower is where the names May thorn and May blossom come from, and why the old saying ne’er cast a clout till May is out is usually read as the blossom, not the month 1 13 14.

Common hawthorn and Midland hawthorn: two trees, two kinds of haw

Britain has a second hawthorn, Crataegus laevigata, the Midland hawthorn, most common in central and southern England, south of the Humber 18. Its leaves are less deeply lobed, and its flowers are pinker and smell less sweet than the common hawthorn’s 18 19. Look closer and each flower carries two or three styles, the slender stalks at its centre, instead of one, and each red berry generally holds two or three stones where the common hawthorn’s holds one 5 18.

The Wildlife Trusts also call it the woodland hawthorn, a shrub of ancient hedgerows and woodland edges 19. Our berry pouches name the common hawthorn on the front and our extract pouch the Midland hawthorn, so the front of the pouch tells you which of the two trees your capsules come from 3 4.

Hawthorn berry, leaf and flower: how to know the tree through the year

In spring the shiny leaves open, each divided into three to seven pairs of lobes, and in May and June the five-petalled, sweet-smelling flowers follow, white with pink anthers 1 5 2. The young leaves and shoots have been nibbled for generations and are still called bread and cheese 13.

From early autumn the flowers have become the haws, the red hawthorn berries that hang in clusters and stay on the tree into winter 2 20. A hawthorn may live for 400 years 21, and one has outlived even that: the Hethel Old Thorn in Norfolk, possibly dating back to the 13th century, is a nature reserve all by itself, probably the smallest in the UK; in 1755 its girth was measured at 9 feet 1 inch, and it still produces flowers, leaves and a crop of haws every year 22.

Are hawthorn berries edible? Jelly, jam and the taste of a haw

Yes: the RHS lists the haws as edible berries that can be made into jellies or used for tea, and Kew’s Grow Wild adds jams to the list 1 23. Wild Food UK’s foraging guide says the berries “taste a bit like a slightly over ripe apple” 20. The RHS puts the fruit in autumn, and a NatureSpot photograph of ripe haws from Leicestershire is dated 17 September 1 5.

What makes the haws set a jelly is pectin: they hold a lot of it, and pectin heated with sugar forms a gel, which is why they go into jams, jellies and fruit leathers, and into a fruit ketchup in UK hawthorn berry recipes 13 20.

Hawthorn berry tea, the leaves in a salad, and the may in folklore

Hawthorn berry tea is the other food use the RHS names for the haws, beside jelly 1, and Kew adds that the young leaves, flowers and buds are eaten too, in a salad or infused in tea 23. Our pouches hold hawthorn berry too, milled or extracted, in a capsule, with the amount printed on the panel and the tree it comes from named on the front 3 4.

Country Life puts it plainly: “Of all the blossom trees of old Britain, hawthorn had the lion’s share of lore” 24. Its flowers made the garlands for May Day, and early on May Day morning its boughs were gathered to dress churches and homes, a rite called a-maying; the maypole itself was likely a flowering hawthorn 2 24. It was held bad luck to cut a hawthorn except in flower, and even then the sprigs stayed outdoors 19.

The Glastonbury thorn was famous for flowering twice a year, around Easter and again at Christmas, and a budded spray from it is still cut and sent to the sovereign each Christmas 25. Botanists have named the common hawthorn so many times over that Kew records 361 synonyms for it, the twice-flowering form among them 26. That is the common hawthorn our berry pouches name on the front; the daily routine comes next.

Store the pouch in a cool, dry place out of direct sunlight, and keep it out of reach of young children 3. All three pouches sit in our hawthorn berry range, among our herbal supplements and herbs and in our daily wellbeing range; certified organic and made with a hypromellose shell, they belong to our organic and vegan ranges too.