Helpful hawthorn the berries for birds and bees

THE commonest tree in Ireland must be the hawthorn.

It’s found pretty well everywhere that tress will grow. The only exception to this is dense woodland. Hawthorns are not shade- tolerant and they are small trees.

This means they must have been quite rare in prehistoric times when Ireland was covered in tall forest. Their increase is intimately connected to human impact on the landscape. They started to multiply about 6,000 years ago when the first farmers arrived.