A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1190 entries
blackthorn
Prunus spinosa, a dense armored shrub that flowers white on bare black wood before any leaf appears, then carries small blue-black fruit — sloes — into autumn. The thorns are hardened side shoots and they are serious.
Etymology
Old English, and exactly what it says: blæc plus þorn, named against hawthorn or whitethorn, its opposite number in the hedge. The distinction is in the bark, which is near-black on this and pale grey on hawthorn, and the two flower a month or more apart, so a hedgerow tells you the date. Sloe is the older word for the fruit, Old English slāh, from a Germanic root shared with Dutch slee and German Schlehe, thought to trace back to a sense of blue.
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