Crataegus laevigata

Midland hawthorn (Crataegus laevigata )

The Two Handles Lige hawthorn (Crataegus laevigata ) is a plant of the genus hawthorn (Crataegus ) and belongs to the rose family ( Rosaceae ).

Description

The Two Handles Lige Hawthorn is reached a shrub or small tree, the plant height between two and ten meters. The stems are branched woody and strong. They form a plurality of rung thorns. The bark is smooth and light gray surface, whereas the bark is brown in color and has a cracked structure. The leaves are bare and slightly lobed or divided up to a third of Spreitenhälfte. Rarely they are split in half. The leaf lobes are blunt.

The species flowers in May with a variety of pure white flowers that are in corymbs. The individual flowers are 0.7 to 2.5 cm wide. The flower always have two or three pens, which also are often still recognizable in the fruits, rarely wear some flowers even a stylus. The sepals are triangular, wide and about as long as wide, the tip is blunt. The anthers are red.

After flowering, the inferior ovary is enclosed in a rock-hard core housing with two or three rock cores in red apple fruits.

Synonyms

Syn: Crataegus oxyacantha auct, Crataegus oxyacanthoides Thuill. .

Ecology

The flowers are nectar- leading disk flowers with fishy odor of trimethylamine. They are pollinated by insects. The roots are equipped with ektotropher mycorrhiza. The plant can grow up to 500 years old, in very rare cases.

Dissemination

The species is found in hedges and woods edge thickets of deciduous forests, or noble hardwood sawmill rich forests in most of Europe and north to southern Scandinavia.

After the plants Sociological units according to Oberdorfer we find the two handles Lige hawthorn in the plant communities of the orders Prunetalia spinosae (meso - to xerophile hedges and bushes ) and Fagetalia sylvaticae ( mesophytic, buchenwald like deciduous forests in Europe).

The Two Handles Lige Hawthorn is available in the Flore elements of submeridionalen montane zone to the temperate zone of Europe subozeanischen. In Germany it is common in all provinces, occurs in the Alps, the Black Forest and the Upper Rhine but only scattered before. In eastern Schleswig -Holstein, the species is common (that is present in over 90 % of all mapping areas ).

Culture

There is a cultivar of the species, hawthorn Crataegus laevigata the genuine ' Paul's Scarlet'.