It can be like snow when you pass some houses where the owners go in for flowering trees like the cherries or other varieties which bring spring to us, as a breeze carries the blossoms down. Yet, at this time, many people prize, above all, the perfectly white, flower of the blackthorn. There are sometimes hundreds of yards of it to be met along the roadside's of the east. And, in the fields and man made shrubberies, there is a startling quality in its whiteness against the sober brown of its branches.
Lilacs may seduce your senses the blackthorn seems to rest keep in our history.
You'll find it in Joyce's Irish Names of Places, .e.g. Drean in Donegal and Dureenaan in Limerick from the Irish draignean. Wolfe Tone, you may remember, shortly after arrival in America sent a list of seed he needed to Thomas Russell, including "2 to 3 quarts of haw stones". He didn't ask for sloes for growing blackthorns.
People who know will tell you that it is very difficult to grow the bush from the seed. It is propagated mostly, if not entirely, by suckering. So, if you put in a little planting of the bush and some fail, just be patient the healthy ones may fill the gaps for you. (As happened, indeed, to a neighbour.)
The blackthorn is good for tourists, of course, with, in some cases, a thorn of no matter which kind, being smoothed and painted black, in memory of faction fights or just as a mark of having been in Ireland.
In fact, many blackthorns are lighter in bark than the hawthorn, and the best stick may be from holly, or wild rose, if you find one with thick enough stems. And, of course, the almost universal working stick in the countryside is from none of these, out from the ash.
You have to admit we get good value from the blackthorn. An impenetrable hedge, if you have enough of them. The thorns are really vicious. You have already had the brilliant flowers and, in autumn, the sloes give you jams and jellies, mixed, perhaps with apple and elder sloe gin, too.
Some bush.