For more than a century before Erath County was settled large herds of feral cattle and horses roamed the area. Non-thorny vegetation was browsed out of the Bosque Valley, allowing the black haw (Viburnum rufidulum) and red haw (Crataegus mackensenii) to become numerous. After settlement, when livestock was fenced away from the river, the haws were chocked out by competing vegetation. Recently Tarleton’s Dr. Alan Nelson, gave up trying to find any surviving haws and pronounced them extinct in the area. But in 1883, barbed-wire fences were so recent and destruction of the haws range still limited, that the haw population was harvested each November. This month groups of Erath residents gathered baskets of the little fruits for baking. The Comanches advised people to howl like a wolf before eating the red haws to avoid stomach cramps.

Stephenville Empire; Ellen D. Schulz, Texas Wildflowers, Chicago: Laidlaw Brothers, 1928; Nelson Coon, Using Wild and Wayside Plants, New York: Dover Publications, 1957; Robert Vines, Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines of the Southwest, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1960.