CHERRIES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Pliny mentions the cherry as growing in several countries and, by reading between lines, we may assume that cultivated cherries were distributed throughout all parts of Europe where agriculture was practiced, by Christ's time or shortly thereafter. Pliny speaks of the cherry in some connection with England, Germany, Belgium and Portugal. Surely we may assume that the cherry was being grown at the same time in at least the countries in Europe which are between or border on those named. But from Pliny to the Sixteenth Century the current of progress in cherry culture was immeasurably slow. In the intervening 1600 years not a score of new cherries were brought under cultivation. Attention was probably given during these dark ages to this and to all fruits as species and as divisions of species which came nearly or quite true to seed. It was only in the refinements of horticulture and botany brought about by the herbalists that true horticultural varieties came into common cultivation.
Thus, the first of the German herbals, the Herbarius, printed at Mainz in 1491, does not describe or even name varieties of cherries but groups them in the two species as Sweets and Sours, the statement running:[22] "The cherries are some sweet, some sour, like the wild apple; the sours bring to the stomach gas and make the mouth fresh (frisch), those too sweet or too sour are of little use." A wood-cut in this old herbal illustrates a Sour Cherry.
According to Müller,[23] not until 1569 did the Germans attempt to give names to varieties, when, in a medical herbal, the Gart der Gesundheit, cherries were roughly divided into four groups: (1) The Amarellen, sour, dark red cherries with long stems. (2) The Weichselkirschen, red cherries with white juice and short stems. (3) The Süsskirschen, red or black Sweet Cherries with long stems. (4) "Beside these yet more" distinguished by their shape and the province in which they are grown. Not until well into the Eighteenth Century do the Germans seem to have given names to more than a few of the most distinct varieties of cherries. Yet the cherry was more largely cultivated in Germany, one, two, or three centuries ago, as it is now, than in any other European country. This, one readily gleans from what has been written on cherries in different countries and from the acknowledgments of foreign pomologists to those of Germany for most of what has been printed regarding cherries. Not only has the cherry been a favorite orchard plant in Germany but since the Sixteenth Century it has been largely planted along the public roads.
Of cherries on the continent, for this brief history, nothing more need be said. Most of the varieties that have been imported from Europe to America have come from England and we must, therefore, devote rather more attention to the history of the cherry in England than in other European countries.