Hawthorn is a drupe fruit with hard core, thin pulp and slightly sour taste. Fruit can be eaten raw or made into preserved fruit cakes, dried and used as medicine. It is a unique medicinal and fruit tree species in China. It has the functions of reducing blood fat, lowering blood pressure, strengthening heart and resisting arrhythmia. It is also a good medicine for invigorating spleen, stimulating appetite, promoting digestion, promoting blood circulation and resolving phlegm, and has a good effect on chest diaphragm, spleen fullness, hernia, blood stasis and amenorrhea.

Vitexin, a flavonoid in hawthorn, is a kind of drug with strong anticancer effect, and its extract has certain inhibitory effect on the growth, proliferation, infiltration and metastasis of cancer cells in vivo.

The effect of promoting digestion and strengthening stomach of hawthorn is mainly related to its pharmacological effects such as helping digestion and inhibiting bacteria, which provides pharmacological basis for its treatment of meat stagnation, abdominal distension, diarrhea and abdominal pain. The efficacy of promoting qi circulation and removing blood stasis is also mainly related to pharmacological effects such as lowering blood lipid, anti-atherosclerosis and anti-myocardial ischemia. The effective components of hawthorn, organic acids and hawthorn flavonoids, are the important material basis of its pharmacological action.