Prunus avium — Wild Cherry

A common native tree.

Often a tall tree, with branches in annual growth whorls. The alternate leaves are large with coarse, blunt teeth. The bark is typical of most cherries that produce their flowers singly or in clusters, with characteristic brownish lenticel bands. The buds are red and bulbous, forming clusters at the ends of flowering shoots. The off-white flowers are in clusters on unbranched stalks. They never completely wreathe the branches and the emerging green leaves always remain visible between them. Wild Cherry flowers considerably later than Myrobalan Plum, but at much the same time as the smaller-flowered Blackthorn. The cherries ripen red in summer.

‘Plena’ (Double Gean) is a common 17th-century selection with double flowers.

 
 

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Copyright © 2007 Philip Brassett