Long live the May Queen
‘The hawthorn is a major habitat by itself, whether hedge or lone tree’
OF all the trees that are in the wood, perhaps the hawthorn is the queen—the overlooked jewel in the crown. It’s not up there in the sylvan pantheon of oak, ash and beech, but is it possible that it’s more important?
David Hockney, a more acknowledged national treasure, thinks so. His retrospective at the Royal Academy in 2012 featured a room frothing with coral-crusted hedgerows. Stanley Spencer’s depicts thick, curded, heavy-skirted May trees centre stage; Samuel Palmer’s thorns are cauliflower-thick with
