bright red fruit in winter season

‘Winter King’ is an outstanding cultivar of our native green hawthorn (Crataegus viridis) and is at home here in the Southern Appalachian region (USDA zones 6 and 7). Over the winter season few deciduous trees present a colorful fruiting display much better than Winter King.

Winter King hawthorn is a small landscape tree, maturing to 25-30 feet tall and wide in twenty years. Its medium green glossy leaves are small in size and are rarely disfigured by disease and insect problems when planted in the right landscape environment. 

Winter Green grows best in a well-drained loamy soil and in full sunlight. Autumn foliage does not stand out, turning yellowish green before falling. A 3- year or older tree is exceptionally summer heat and drought tolerant.

Winter King flowers in mid-spring, usually right after ornamental crabapples, which novice gardeners often confuse with hawthorns. Individual flowers are 5-petaled and tend to be malodorous. The silvery green branches bear sparse numbers of one inch long thorns.

Winter King bears a bountiful annual crop of 1/2 inch diameter green fruits which turn bright red in the fall. They serve as a plentiful food source for winter-feeding birds and other wildlife. Deer rarely feed on the prickly branches.

As the tree ages, bark on central trunk and major scaffold branches chips off in small pieces exposing a tan to orange inner wood.