Mynydd Troed

The Hawthorn the only British plant to be named after a month, the May Tree, blossom has gone after a short two week bloom.

The blossom white, heavy, sweet and sour, 'the risen cream of all milkiness of May time' as H.E.Bates put it.

The nectar and honey is rare with reports ranging from 1 in 7 to 1 in 30 years.
Here at around 500 feet above sea level the bloom arrived around the 10th of May. In Swansea I noticed it at the beginning of May.

It is notoriously erratic in its flowering and greatly influenced by late winter and spring temperatures, altitude, soil and shade. I visited some friends in Llangynidr and as I dropped down from the mountain at Beaufort at around 1500 feet I was met by the bright white blossom of the May tree (28th May).

In 1994 first blooming was recorded at Leeds 60m on 16th May, Skipton 100m 23rd May, Cowside 316m on 16th June and on anearside hill 345m on 24th June. At Malham Tarn first bushes did not flower until the beginning of July and one was still in flower on 29th July.

This goes a long way to explaining why an old beekeeper that I met recently who lives in Cwmdu (the dark valley) told me that he had had good crops of honey every year for over 50 years. I asked what the bees fed on and his first reply was hawthorn. As I drive through Cwmdu I can still see the hawthorn in flower high up on the slopes of Mynydd Troed on the East slope. I can now understand why he told me it was hawthorn that his bees went to.

Hawthorn has a long history, its Welsh name is Blodau marw mam literally flowes death mother. Historically is was a bad omen to take branches of the blossom inside presumably becasue of the suffocating smell the blossoms have in a closed room

June is often seen as a gap in food supply for the bees, I will have to watch out for this.