White Hawthorn (Crataegus oxyacantha Auct.) is a bush or a small tree native to Europe and shows its white flowers in May. It belongs to the family of rosaceous plants (Rosaceae) and can often be found in the form of hedge plants.

The first references to the use of hawthorn as a remedy date from Dioskurides from the 1st century AD. Various mythic and ritual meanings have since been attached to the plant over the ages.

Oligomeric procyanidin and flavonoids are the mainly responsible ingredients.

For a person with a healthy heart the benefits of hawthorn would be increased cardiac activity, a person with heart problems would, after a long- term treatment, feel a subjective improvement and there would be a measurable, and thus objective, increase and stabilisation of the cardiac activity.