The blackthorn is a member of the genus Prunus, which includes many fruit trees including cherry, plum, damson, apricot, peach and almond . It should come as no surprise, then, that blackthorn produces its own sort of proto-plum, the sloe. This is a small, round bluish-black fruit with a whitish waxy covering and containing a single hard stone. The taste is very sour, but it has found a use in flavouring sloe gin, a very popular tipple among my friends. I keep meaning to collect some and try my hand at making a bottle or three, but somehow I never seem to get round to it. In the springtime, blackthorn bears small white flowers. The small oval, pointed or rounded dark green leaves appear after the flowers. The fruit ripen about September to October time.

There is a very closely related species known round these parts as "whitethorn", though I can find no reference to this in my tree books. I think it could be a subspecies or variety of blackthorn, but may possibly be a form of the wild plum (Prunus domesticus), which is very similar. Seen in winter-time, the only obvious difference is that the whitethorn has a lighter coloured bark.

[I have since learnt that hawthorn is sometimes referred to as "whitethorn". However, whenever I have heard the word round these parts it has always been applied to a light-barked blackthorn look-alike. Not buckthorn, by the way, that's something else again.]

The wood of blackthorn is heavier and stronger than hazel. However, suitable pieces of blackthorn are harder to come by. Here in the South of England, it tends to grow in low, dense thickets which can be all but impenetrable without full body armour and a medical team standing by! This is of course due to the vicious thorns, which are not to be taken lightly. I've had one go straight through the sole of a heavy boot and into my foot.

Even in these conditions, long straight stems of round cross-section can be difficult to find; blackthorn has an annoying habit of developing an oval cross-section. If not too pronounced this can be perfectly acceptable, but often it is excessive. The quality of the bark is also rather variable. On a good piece, it can be quite smooth and extremely tough; however, much of the blackthorn growing round these parts has closely-spaced ridges running horizonatally round the stem. These make the bark very rough and unattractive, often actually splitting round these ridges.

Better material is found in the North of the UK - and in Ireland, where, for some reason they like to hide the bark under a thick coat of some sort of black paint. Anyone who has only seen blackthorn sticks done like this can be forgiven for thinking that blackthorn is a crude and even ugly material, but this is far from the truth. The colour of the bark can vary from a bright red-brown to purple-black and can take vigorous buffing and polishing, giving a silky-smooth finish with great depth.

Because the thorns grow every couple of inches or so along the stem, a blackthorn shank in its natural state will always have a knobbly appearance. This attractive feature doesn't have to make the stick awkward to handle; the knobbles can be rounded over and made smooth to the touch without losing the essential character of the material. Sometimes, just like any other sort of wood, a blackthorn shank will have damaged, loose or cracked bark, in which case the bark can be stripped off, revealing a very attractive cream coloured wood, often with streaks of pink-brown. The colour darkens gradually upon exposure to air, mellowing to a light buff colour.

A thicker piece of blackthorn can also be very effective if turned on a lathe, revealing the darker heartwood around the thorn-knots. This is one possible use for those thick oval-shaped pieces.

Being a much denser wood than, say, hazel, blackthorn takes much longer to dry out thoroughly. Where hazel can be fully air-seasoned within 18 months, blackthorn takes from five to seven years. This is perhaps not as widely understood as it should be, and one has to be careful to avoid purchasing material that is not fully seasoned. A shank made from such material is still losing moisture and shrinking. This can cause "winding" (bending) and even splitting at the joint, where a dowel or metal rod has been glued into the thick end of the shank. The wood shrinks, the dowel or rod doesn't (and neither does the glue); something has to give.