see it clearly

Cherry Tree

The three wild forms of cherry trees are popularly distinguished under the names Bird Cherry (P. Padus), Wild Cherry, or Gean (P. Avium), and Dwarf Cherry (P. Cerasus); and though they agree in their botanical characters and geographical distribution, yet there are distinctive points which are sufficiently obvious to be explained in simple language.

To take the last point first, the geographical range of the three forms is nearly the same, namely, from the Himalayas, through Western Asia, Northern Africa, and Europe; but the Dwarf Cherry seems the more restricted form, not occurring either in Scotland or in Africa, whilst the Bird Cherry occurs in the Arctic regions both of Europe and of Asia.

Strange though it may seem at first to the unbotanical reader, the Cherries are classed, owing to various details in their structure, as related to that great group of plants known as the Rose tribe. This tribe embraces, next to the Cupulifera, to which, as we saw in the previous chapter, the Oak belongs, the greatest number of our British trees, and includes not only Roses, Brambles, Strawberries, Cinquefoils, and Meadow-sweets, but also Apples, Pears, Medlars, Quinces, and Hawthorns, besides those trees more immediately related to the Cherries--the Black-thorns and the Plums. With these last the Cherries are united by botanists in the genus Prunus, a group mainly characterized by the structure of its well-known fruit, which they term a "drupe." This is simply the enlarged ovary of the flower, the calyx of which has fallen with its snowy petals. It is one-chambered, and contains but one, or at most two, kernels or seeds, and is plainly divisible into an outer skin, a fleshy pulp, and a stone enclosing the said kernel or kernels. 

There are two differences, however, that clearly distinguish the Blackthorns and Plums on the one hand, from the Cherries on the other; in the former the two halves of the blade in the young leaf, when in the bud, are rolled up like a scroll, whilst in the Cherries they are folded together like the two halves of a sheet of note-paper. Again, in the Plum group the fruit is covered by the beautiful and familiar waxy bloom, that serves to shoot off the rain-drops like the oiliness of a water-bird's feathers; but one of the most characteristic features of the fruit of a Cherry is its smooth and brilliantly burnished surface, burnished "with nature's polish."

Taking the three forms separately, the Bird Cherry (P. Padus) may well come first, as being in several particulars more distinct from the other two than they are from one another. It is a small tree with one main trunk, reaching but ten or twenty feet in height. Its leaves are smooth, and finely and regularly toothed; but its chief distinctive mark is the arrangement of the blossoms, which is what is technically known as a "raceme"--i.e., the flowers, which are numerous, spring singly on short stalklets from an elongated pendulous axis, as in the laburnum--an arrangement altogether different, as we shall see from that in the other two forms. The fruit is small, roundish, and black, harshly bitter in taste, and encloses a round wrinkled stone. The astringent bark of this species has been proposed as a substitute for quinine.

The Gean (P. Avium), (in speaking of which it should, perhaps, be noted that there has in past times been an unfortunate confusion of the English and Latin forms of the name, Bird Cherry and Prunus Avium, which ought to, but do not, belong to the same species) is a tree from twenty to thirty feet or more in height, and sometimes more than nine inches in diameter. It grows in dry, rocky woods, and yields a beautiful red timber, fine grained, and tough enough for tool-handles, but once valued far more than at present by cabinet-makers, especially on the Continent. The leaves are drooping, and downy on their under surfaces, and the flowers, which are produced somewhat later, are arranged in "umbels"--i.e., each on a rather long stalk springing with the others from one point, like the ribs of an umbrella. The fruit is heartshaped, firm in flesh, and not very juicy, bitter in taste, and either black or red. From it is distilled the Kirschwasser of Germany, and it is probably the wild original of the Morella, or Brandy Cherry of gardens.

The Dwarf Cherry (P. Cerasus) is a bushy shrub, not more than from three to eight feet in height, with a reddish bark, and with short-stalked, erect, and coarsely-notched leaves. Its flowers, too, are arranged in umbles, and its fruit is round, red, and acid, being distinguished by this acidity and by the comparative abundance of its juice. It is believed to be the origin of our sweet garden Cherries; though, even if this be so, it does not militate against the statement that the latter are a late introduction from Asia, whilst the Dwarf Cherry appears truly wild over a large part of Europe.

No doubt the Romans first introduced the cultivation of the tree as an orchard fruit into Britain, and thus their name gave rise to the "ceris beam" of the Anglo-Saxon, and the "cherry" of our Normanised modern English; but it is also said that in the "Dark Ages" this cultivation was lost, and that the tree was again introduced about the time of Henry VIII. Certainly, though he can hardly be quoted as referring to its cultivation, Shakespeare was perfectly familiar with the Cherry, the main ideas associated with it in his mind being, to judge from "A Midsummer Night's Dream," the close resemblance of one fruit on the tree to another--as we say, "like two peas in a pod"--and the union in diversity of the two stalks that so often separate themselves from the rest of the umbel, each bearing its cherry, like sisters growing up together, or like two ruby lips inviting kisses.

What dweller in the country is ignorant of the charms of the wild Cherry? One of the early cheerfulnesses of spring is its array of light bronzy-brown leaves waving in May over a hedge-row yet black with the thorn-boughs of winter. To the true lover of nature, who will be perforce also a careful observer of her ways, the delicate texture of spring leaves is as charming as is their coloring. Then among the brown-green leaves clusters of snowy blossoms make their appearance, giving a festival look to the whole wood-side, and long sprays of cherry-blossoms frequently wave aloft above the surrounding coppice, to send down, after a week or so of beauty, showers of light snow upon our heads as we gather the flowers beneath the trees.

Early gales, following summer drought, often strip the tree of its leaves before they lose their mature green color; but if this is not so, there is indeed a treat in store for the sensuous lover of color, as far surpassing that enjoyed by thrushes, blackbirds, and village schoolboys in the lusciousness of the ripe fruit, as his capacity for enjoyment is more keen than theirs. The Laureate has spoken of the...

"Laburnum dropping wells of fire;"

but the autumn leaves of the Cherry far more closely resemble Pentecostal tongues of flame than do the clear yellow clusters of the favorite garden tree. The dark green shades into an infinite variety of pinks, crimsons, oranges, browns, and yellows, each little hanging leaf suggesting a piece of one of the magnificently-tinted leaves of the Muscat grape.

With so much beauty, and with valuable timber, it is strange that the Cherry should have attracted but slight attention from John Evelyn, the pioneer of English forestry; but in his "Forest Trees," Selby does full justice to its merits. He points out that maraschino is manufactured from an allied species in Dalmatia and the north of Italy, and that it is also used in making ratafia; whilst he becomes quite enthusiastic on the subject of its timber. This close-grained red wood is, he says, so easily worked, and takes so fine a polish, as to be almost equal to mahogany, whilst for alternate exposure to dryness and moisture it is only inferior to the best oak or larch. It is, he states further, in request for the manufacture of certain musical instruments, and having formed a high opinion of its value as a forest tree, he urges its more extensive planting from this point of view. Referring, no doubt, mainly to the Gean (P. Avium), he points out that they will readily grow straight upwards if planted close together; and, being a fast-growing tree, is therefore well adapted for planting as a "nurse" for oak--that is, for admixture with the slower-growing, but longer-lived, timber-trees, to draw them up, being subsequently felled to make room for their further development. The Cherry, when grown under these circumstances, may, Selby continues, reach a height of sixty or seventy feet in fifty or sixty years; and though it will then be felled so that the forest monarch may, for the last half-century of his useful life, rule alone in his domain, up to that time, owing to the loose and ascending arrangement of its boughs, it will require but little pruning to let in the light upon the young oaks under its sheltering care, so that it makes a better "nurse" than either beech or ash.

Single trees look beautiful even in the hedgerows of our corn-fields, though their suckers may render them as objectionable, from a utilitarian point of view, in such a situation as on a lawn. A better place, however, is in the thinly-planted woodland belt that skirts the home park; but, though several trees in the front line of such a belt will have a most pleasing effect, the best lowland position is, perhaps, a slight clearing in a coppice, where the mass of flower-decked branches, waving over a carpet of spring blossoms, their pure white relieved with the bronze hue of the young leaves, comes as a charming surprise upon the beholder.