THE old English for this hedgerow shrub was Haegthorn and it is similarly named in English, German, Swedish, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish.

The fruit is called the Haw and it also accounts for place names including Haworth. In older times in Lancashire the species itself was abbreviated to Haw or Hag.

There is nothing so beautiful as the white blossom of hawthorn, pictured, but occasionally there is a variety of the shrub known as Midland Hawthorn which has pink blossom.

Country children at one time used to eat the fresh leaves of hawthorn which they called "bread and cheese."

It is strange how our children memories tend to stay with us. I remember as an eight-year-old chewing hawthorn leaves and thinking that it was "nowt like a cheese butty." As I looked into the interior of the thorny hedge I saw a chaffinch incubating her eggs inside a wonderfully neat nest.

On that day I wrote down my first diary note and I have kept daily notes ever since. Fifty years on I still prefer a cheese and onion butty to hawthorn leaves but I have a soft spot for hawthorn and a chaffinch which we used to call a "spink."