Cranberries (Re: ho 'circle')

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004, R. Rankin wrote:
> BTW, the reason for the modifier with the ho- 'cranberry', I think, is
> that the *ho by itself was probably the 'black hawthorn' ("black haws")
> word.  It gets an 'absolutive' *wa- or *wi- in several dialects and the
> resultant *w-h cluster apparently comes out as a /p/.

That makes sense, though I kind of wonder what the modifier might be.
Sort of like "cranberry" in English, though there etymologists actually
know what a cran is.  (For those who haven't had Introduction to
Linguistics or a similar course where this initiation secret was revealed,
'cran' = 'bog', and 'cran' as such is attested in some English or
neighboring Germanic dialects, e.g. Scottish.)

Is the /p/ *ph, *hp, or *p?