The Cherries of New York

Chapter V.--Minor Varieties of Cherries 205

BIBLIOGRAPHY, REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS 337

INDEX 347

INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS

PORTRAIT OF CHARLES DOWNING Frontispiece

FACING PAGE ABBESSE D'OIGNIES 98

ARCH DUKE 100

BING 104

BLACK TARTARIAN 108

BOURGUEIL 110

BRUSSELER BRAUNE 112

CARNATION 114

COE 120

DOUBLE NATTE 124

DOWNER 126

DYEHOUSE 126

EAGLE 128

EARLY PURPLE 130

EARLY RICHMOND 132

ELTON 136

EMPRESS EUGENIE 138

ENGLISH MORELLO 140

FLORENCE 140

GEORGE GLASS 142

IDA 144

KIRTLAND 148

KNIGHT 150

LAMBERT 152

LARGE MONTMORENCY 154

LATE DUKE 156

Louis PHILIPPE 158

MAY DUKE 164

MEZEL 168

MONTMORENCY 170

NAPOLEON 172

NOUVELLE ROYALE 174

OLIVET 176

OSTHEIM 178

PRUNUS AVIUM (DOUBLE FLOWERING), BLOSSOMS OF 30

PRUNUS AVIUM (MAZZARD) 72

PRUNUS AVIUM (MAZZARD), BLOSSOMS OF 68

PRUNUS AVIUM (YELLOW SPANISH), BLOSSOMS OF 28

PRUNUS AVIUM × PRUNUS CERASUS (REINE HORTENSE), BLOSSOMS OF 32

PRUNUS CERASUS (AMARELLE GROUP), BLOSSOMS OF 24

PRUNUS CERASUS (MORELLO GROUP), BLOSSOMS OF 26

PRUNUS MAHALEB 74

PRUNUS MAHALEB, BLOSSOMS OF 70

PRUNUS TOMENTOSA 34

REINE HORTENSE 180

REPUBLICAN 182

ROCKPORT 182

ROYAL DUKE 184

SCHMIDT 186

SHORT-STEM MONTMORENCY 188

SKLANKA 188

SUDA 192

TIMME 192

VLADIMIR 194

WINDSOR 198

WOOD 200

YELLOW SPANISH 202

THE CHERRIES OF NEW YORK

CHAPTER I. Cultivated Cherries

CULTIVATED CHERRIES

CHERRIES AND THEIR KINDRED

The genus Prunus plays a very important part in horticulture. It furnishes, in temperate climates, the stone-fruits, plants of ancient and modern agriculture of which there are a score or more commonly cultivated and at least as many more sparingly grown for their edible fruits. Of these stone-fruits the species of cherries rank with those of the plum and the peach in commercial importance while the several botanical groups of the apricot and almond are less important, but hardly less well-known, members of this notable genus. Prunus is of interest, too, because the history of its edible species follows step by step the history of agriculture. The domestication of its fruits from wild progenitors, most of which are still subjects of common observation, illustrates well the influences and conditions under which plants have generally been brought into domestication. The genus is also of more than ordinary note because the number of its economic species is being increased almost yearly by new-found treasures from North America and Asia, not varieties but species, which promise under future domestication still further to enrich horticulture.

The plum and the peach surpass the cherry in diversity of flavor, aroma, texture, color, form and size, characters which make fruits pleasant to the palate and beautiful to the eye; but the cherry, perhaps, plays a more important part than the plum or the peach in domestic economy. It has fewer prejudices as to soil and climate, hence is much more widely distributed and is more easily grown, being better represented in the orchards and gardens in the regions where the three fruits grow. The cherry, too, fruits more quickly after planting, ripens earlier in the season and its varieties are more regular in bearing and usually more fruitful--characters that greatly commend it to fruit-growing people. Probably it is the most popular of all fruits for the garden, dooryard, roadside and small orchard. All in all, while adorning a somewhat humbler place in pomology, it is more generally useful than the showier and more delicate plum and peach.

Though placed by most botanists in the same genus, each of the stone-fruits constitutes a natural group so distinct that neither botanist nor fruit-grower could possibly take one for another as the trees and fruits of the different groups are called to mind. But there are outstanding forms which seem to establish connections between the many species and the several groups of fruits and through these outliers the characters are so confounded in attempting to separate species that it becomes quickly apparent that there are few distinct lines of cleavage within the genus. For several centuries systematists have disputed as to whether the stone-fruits fall most naturally into one, two, or three genera--indeed have not been able to agree as to whether some species are plums or cherries, or others apricots or plums. Hybridization between the cultivated divisions of the genus--unquestionably it has taken place in nature as well--has added to the perplexities of classification. Accepting, then, for the present at least, the very artificial classification which, rather paradoxically, places in one genus a number of fruits commonly thought of as quite distinct, let us briefly note the characters which best distinguish cherries from their congeners.

The cherry is nearest of kin to the plum. These two are roughly separated from the other cultivated members of the genus to which they belong by bearing their fruits on stems in fascicles while the others are practically stemless and are solitary or borne in pairs. The fruits of plums and cherries are globular or oblong, succulent and smooth or nearly so. Peaches, apricots, nectarines and almonds are more sulcate than plums and cherries and the almond has a drier flesh, splitting at maturity to liberate the stone; and, with the exception of nectarines and a few varieties of apricots, all are very pubescent. The stones of cherries and plums are smooth, or nearly so, while those of the other fruits are sculptured and pitted, though those of the apricot are often somewhat plum-like.

Cherries are separated from plums by their smaller size and distinctive color of skin, juice and flesh; by the texture and distinct flavor of the flesh; by growth in corymbose rather than umbelliferous fascicles; by the more globular stone; and by the arrangement of the leaves in the bud. Leaves of the plum are usually convolute, or rolled up, in the bud, while those of the cherry are conduplicate, or folded lengthwise along the midrib.

We have been discussing the cherries of common cultivation--the Sweet Cherry and Sour Cherry of the orchards, the fascicled cherries to which the botanists give the group name, Cerasus. But there is another group, the Padus cherries, well worthy of brief mention. The most noteworthy representatives of Padus are the bird cherry (Prunus padus) of the Old World and the choke cherry (Prunus virginiana) of the New World. These Padus cherries are distinguished botanically in having their flowers borne in racemes, that is, in long clusters of which those nearest the base of the shoot open first--rather than in the short-clustered fascicles of the Cerasus group. The cherries are small and almost or quite black. The Padus cherries are but sparingly cultivated but undoubtedly they are capable of some improvement under more thorough cultivation.

DISTRIBUTION OF CULTIVATED CHERRIES

The cherry is one of the most commonly cultivated of all fruits and the many varieties of its several forms encircle the globe in the North Temperate Zone and are being rapidly disseminated throughout the temperate parts of the Southern Hemisphere. For centuries it has been, as we shall see in the history of the species, one of the most valuable fruit-producing trees of Europe and Asia--an inhabitant of nearly every orchard and garden as well as a common roadside tree in temperate climates in both continents. From Europe, as a center of distribution, the cherry has played an important part in the orcharding in temperate regions of other continents. In North America varieties of the cherry are grown from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island on the north, to the Gulf of California, Texas and Florida on the south, yielding fruit in a greater diversity of soils and climates in Canada and the States of the Union than any other tree-fruit.

The Sour Cherry is very cosmopolitan, thriving in many soils; is able to withstand heat, cold and great atmospheric dryness, if the soil contain moisture; and, though it responds to good care, it grows under neglect better than any other tree-fruit. The Sour Cherry, too, is rather less inviting to insects and fungi than most other stone-fruits, being practically immune to the dreaded San José scale. On the other hand the Sweet Cherry is very fastidious as to soils, is lacking in hardiness to both heat and cold and is prey to many insects and subject to all the ills to which stone-fruits are heir; it is grown at its best in but few and comparatively limited areas, though these are very widely distributed.

USES OF THE CHERRY

The cherry is a delectable early-summer fruit, especially grateful as a refreshing dessert and much valued in cookery, when fresh, canned, preserved or dried, for the making of pies, tarts, sauces and confections. During the last few years, in America at least, the consumption of cherries has been enormously increased by the fashion of adding preserved cherries, as much for ornament as to give flavor, to many drinks and ices. The great bulk of the cherry crop now grown in America for commercial purposes is canned, the industry being more or less specialized in a few fruit regions. The demand for cherries for canning seems to be increasing greatly but unfortunately it calls for but few varieties, the Montmorency being the sort sought for among the Sour Cherries, while the hard-fleshed varieties of the Bigarreau type are in greatest demand among the Sweet Cherries.

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