Hawthorn – Leaf Spot

Q: We have Indian hawthorn shrubs across the front of our house. They all look like this. I drove around the neighborhood and most of the other hawthorns look the same. Can we save them or must they be replaced?

A: You have two choices, neither of which is really good: you could try to control the disease and nurse the hawthorns back to health or you can rip them out and replace them with something else.

I lean toward the “rip and replace” option. There are newer varieties of hawthorn that resist this leaf spot disease but they are not completely immune. I worry that spores from the currently infected shrubs will stick around and infect the new ones.

Consider using loropetalum instead. These tough shrubs come in a variety of sizes and rarely get diseases.

See my notes on better hawthorns