I have a hawthorne tree in my front yard. My neighbor has several in his yard (he's more of a lawn guy than a tree guy, so I haven't asked him about this yet). I just moved to this house this summer.
All the hawthorne trees are loaded with fruit, but all of the fruit is deformed, with spots & with gray-colored dry scabs/fungus. It looks like a very thin layer of concrete or flour paste. But the weird thing is that the leaves are flawless!
I can't find any reference to a disease that attacks the fruit without affecting the leaves as well. Is it a climate thing, from this summer's drought? The fruit looks downright mutagenic, & I can't find a single normal berry anywhere on the tree.
If I can't pinpoint it, I'll have to just spray the tree next spring with whatever I can find at the local hardware store, & I hate to thow chemicals around without knowing what exactly I'm fighting.
I take the liquid extract of hawthorn berry every morning. I take it to improve blood circulation and for protection against cardiovacular disease, which I have a genetic predisposition for developing.
It's good for controlling high blood pressure, strengthening heart function, and reinforcing a normal heartbeat. Hawthorn?s cardio-protective benefits work in three ways: dilates blood vessels to improve blood flow and lower blood pressure, deters certain enzymes that can deteriorate heart muscles, thus correcting irregular heartbeat, prevents plaque buildup in the coronary arteries by working as an antioxidant (inhibits the sticky oxidation of the body's LDL cholesterol).
And studies have shown that it reduces blood glucose levels of diabetic rats.
Pharmaceutical grade hawthorn extract has evidence of the cardiovascular benefit you suggest -- IF cardiovascular disease actually exists, IF the extract is pharmaceutical grade & IF it is used in conjunction with conventional treatments. Without concurrent use of conventional treatment the efficacy drops to about that of a placebo. Without actual chronic need of medical treatment there is no evidence of preventative value to individuals in good health.
Pharmaceutical grade extracts are available with prescription in Germany; though their use alone is probably no more beneficial than eating some blueberries, when the extracts are taken in conjunction with conventional treatments there is an improvement over conventional treatments alone, evidenced in about a dozen randomized doubleblind placebo-controlled studies (studies wildly misappropriated & wildly misrepresented by promoters & vendors of herbal products).
Pharmaceutical tinctures of hawthorn are usually derived from C. oxyacantha. Not all species have the same chemical components, but what is bought in healthfood stores is neither pharmaceutical grade nor necessarily the correct species (C. ambigua being a cheaper low-end produce more apt to be processed by herb vendors who are at the bottom of the commercial food chain & absent from the pharmaceutical chain).
Over-the-counter preparations sold in healthfood stores are not pharmaceutical grade, not predictable as to species of hawthorn, not predictable as to freshness, are nearly always adulterated with other ingredients, & are completely unpredictable as to their chemical constituants, so that predictable benefit is impossible.
In summation: Objective health improvements have been shown in randomized doubleblind placebo controlled studies of acutely ill persons when hawthorn extracts were of pharmaceutical grade & administered in addition to a chemical-synthetic medication, having otherwise the value of a placebo [see for example Habs, 2004; Wold et al 2005].
In the context of foods high in antioxidants, hawberries rate right up there with blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, almonds, & russet potatoes. Eating any of these things in the form of small pills will not correct a poor diet, but eating fruits & vegetables high in antioxidants & excluding unhealthy foods would provide the antioxidant value without need of food supplement pills. The stale adulterated rubbish bought as food supplements are too unpredictable to have value. The pill-popping habits of gullible herb customers require faith or delusion, counting on specific & predictable health benefits that the products wisely do not promise anywhere on the label because it isn't there.
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