Hedgerow Medicine

Blackthorn’s delicate white flowers are a reviving sight in spring, and were known as ‘lady of pearls’. It is a Prunus (Prunus spinosa), a rose family member, and its famed astringency served to ‘loosen’ intestinal pain (using the flowers) or to ‘bind’ the bowels when suffering diarrhoea (the fruit or sloes). Modern research adds antioxidant and anti-tumour potential to its ancient reputation.

Blackthorn is a wild ancestor of cultivated plums and has remained untamed, unlike its widely eaten relatives – apricots, cherries, peaches and almonds, as well as plums. Perhaps it is the vicious long thorns, which can carry algal or fungal contaminants that cause painful sinusitis, that prevented it entering cultivation.

The berries are of course sloes, and the reason we are advised to pick these after a frost is that freezing reduces the berries’ tannin levels and increases those of its sugars. The astringency remains but the palatability improves, especially in a sloe syrup. Sloes in any form are a useful go-to for tummy upsets, diarrhoea and other bodily ‘fluxes’.