Crataegus laevigata(Poir.) DC.

Midland Hawthornmidland hawthornsmooth hawthorn

WFO wfo-0001009174 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Crataegus laevigata, photographed by Jon Mortin
fig. a Jon Mortin, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-07 / obs. 204450317

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 24 botanical countries

Regions where Crataegus laevigata is native: Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Central European Russia, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, Sicilia, South European Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine AustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumCentral European RussiaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkFranceGermanyHungaryItalyNetherlandsNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSiciliaSouth European RussiaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Crataegus laevigata, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Austria AUT EUROPE
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Central European Russia RUC
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Netherlands NET
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
Sicilia SIC
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 121 in flower of 243 examined

Proportion of examined Crataegus laevigata in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 2 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 1 3 too few examined
Apr 72 78 92% 84% to 96%
May 44 47 94% 83% to 98%
Jun 3 8 38% 14% to 69%
Jul 0 3 too few examined
Aug 0 22 0% 0% to 15%
Sep 0 44 0% 0% to 8%
Oct 1 31 3% 1% to 16%
Nov 0 4 too few examined
Dec 0 1 too few examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Crataegus laevigata observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 121 of 243 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,713 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -5.5 °C -1.7 °C 2.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.5 °C 22.8 °C 26.8 °C
Annual rainfall 585 mm 820 mm 1,388 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 95 mm 158 mm 277 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,713 research-grade observations of Crataegus laevigata that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 105 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Crataegus ariifolia Cinovskis
  • Crataegus calycina var. walokochiana (Hrabětová) Cinovskis
  • Crataegus coriacea Gand.
  • Crataegus cuneatotrifida Lojac.
  • Crataegus laevigata f. bicrenulata Hrabětová ex Ker.-Nagy
  • Crataegus laevigata f. ellipticifolia (Cinovskis) Cinovskis
  • Crataegus laevigata f. rosea (Willd.) Geerinck
  • Crataegus laevigata subsp. carnoviensis (Hrabětová) Dostál
  • Crataegus laevigata subsp. laevigata
  • Crataegus laevigata subsp. palmstruchii (Lindm.) Franco
  • Crataegus laevigata subsp. vulgaris (Medik.) T.Baranec
  • Crataegus laevigata subsp. walokochiana (Hrabětová) Dostál
  • Crataegus laevigata subsp. walokochiana (Hrabětová) Holub
  • Crataegus laevigata var. carnoviensis (Hrabětová) Hrabětová
  • Crataegus laevigata var. integrifolia (Wallr.) Ker.-Nagy
  • Crataegus laevigata var. mathei (Pénzes) Ker.-Nagy
  • Crataegus laevigata var. microphylla (Lange) Hrabětová
  • Crataegus laevigata var. microxyacantha (Pénzes) Ker.-Nagy
  • Crataegus laevigata var. ovoxyacantha (Pénzes) Ker.-Nagy
  • Crataegus laevigata var. palmstruchii (Lindm.) P.D.Sell
  • Crataegus laevigata var. sorbifolia (Dippel) Ker.-Nagy
  • Crataegus laevigata var. vulgaris (DC.) P.A.Schmidt
  • Crataegus monogyna var. rosea (Willd.) K.Koch
  • Crataegus oxyacantha f. auriculata (Lange ex Dippel) C.K.Schneid.

and 81 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.