HEART-SHAPED WEICHSEL

Prunus cerasus

This Sour Cherry, of the Morello group, is too poor in quality to recommend it for any purpose. The fruit is scarcely edible until dead ripe and even then is too puckering to eat out of hand with relish. The cherries are very attractive, being large for the kind, heart-shaped, of a handsome, clear, glossy dark purple color and very uniform in all characters. The tree is conspicuous because of its symmetrical shape, large size, round head and its many branches and branchlets. The leaves are characteristically small, as are the flowers, which are further distinguished by very narrow petals. The tree is hardy and productive and quite worth a place on a lawn as an ornamental if not in the garden for its fruit. The variety has several characters to commend it to plant-breeders.

This variety came to light in written records in the early part of the Nineteenth Century in German fruit-books under the name Saure Herzkirsche or Herzkirschweichsel and was highly recommended for its fine flavor. Professor J. L. Budd of Iowa, in one of his European trips, was impressed with its symmetrical habit of growth and its abundant foliage where he found it growing in eastern Europe as a lawn tree. He included it among his importations but it has not proved valuable in the New World.

Tree large, vigorous, upright-spreading, open-topped, unproductive; branches rather slender, smooth except for the large, conspicuous lenticels; branchlets slender, long; leaves numerous, two and three-fourths inches long, one and three-eighths inches wide, obovate to oval, thin, dark green, smooth; petiole over one-half inch long, tinged with red, with from one to three small, globose, greenish-yellow or brownish glands at the base of the blade; buds intermediate in size and length, usually obtuse; season of bloom late; flowers one inch across; borne in scattered clusters; filaments one-fourth inch long; pistil slightly shorter than the stamens, often defective.

Fruit matures in mid-season; about three-fourths of an inch in diameter, roundish-conic, slightly compressed; color very dark, dull red; stem slender, one and one-fourth inches long, adhering to the fruit; skin thin, tough; flesh very dark red, with dark wine-colored juice, tender, rather meaty, very astringent, sour; of poor quality; stone nearly free, small, ovate, flattened, pointed, with roughish and colored surfaces.