蜜芽传媒

The change of season from spring to summer often happens in early May when the air warms and white seems to be the colour of the countryside. Most familiar of the white blossoms is the hawthorn, the may-tree itself. Barely a hedgerow is without one. It is accessible and common, and its froth of white flowers are attractive - yet no flower is considered more unlucky. To take hawthorn blossom into a house was thought to invite illness and death. Children were forbidden to bring it home. The reasons for such terrifying tales are not clear. Perhaps it is the smell, sometimes sweet and sometimes reminiscent of rotting flesh. The white blossom is followed by blood-red haws and the floral combination of red and white sit uneasily together in many people鈥檚 view. For whatever reason, hawthorn blossom provokes the most powerful superstitions of our entire British flora.