The plant appears also in ancient poetry - for example in Ovid's ‘Metamorphoses’: ‘Fruit from trees, strawberries from mountains were collected by villagers’. Blackthorn and hawthorn growing on thorn ...

Sloes are the fruit of the blackthorn plant - a shrub with long sharp thorns which is traditionally used in Britain to make cattle-proof hedges. Centuries ago the berries were reputed to have ...