SPARHAWK

Prunus avium

Sparhawk has little to recommend it for either a home or commercial orchard; but the rich and honeyed sweetness of the cherries, scarcely surpassed in flavor, might make it worth planting by plant-breeders and connoisseurs of choicely good fruits. The name "honey" which appears in several of the synonyms is indicative of the flavor of the fruit. The cherries are quite too small and the pits altogether too large for a commercial product. The tree is upright-spreading, with numerous thick branches over which the cherries are rather thickly scattered in ones, twos and threes and never in clusters. The fruit-stems are characteristically long and slender. Though of the Bigarreau group the flesh is too tender to well withstand harvesting, shipping and the brown-rot.

This cherry was introduced by Edward Sparhawk, for whom it was named, of Brighton, Massachusetts. The variety has been known under a number of different names, the number being no measure of its merit, however, for it has never been extensively cultivated. The American Pomological Society placed it in its fruit catalog list of recommended varieties in 1862 but dropped it in 1871 and for many years but little attention has been given it. It is now for sale in but few of the nurseries of the country.

Tree large, vigorous, upright, rather open-topped, hardy, unproductive; trunk stocky, slightly shaggy; branches thick; branchlets medium in thickness and length; leaves numerous, five inches long, two and one-fourth inches wide, long-oval to obovate, thin, medium green; margin coarsely and doubly serrate, glandular; petiole two inches long, thick, overlaid with red, with one or two large, reniform, reddish glands on the stalk; buds intermediate in size and length; season of bloom intermediate, average length five days; flowers one and one-fourth inches across; pistil shorter than the stamens.

Fruit matures in mid-season, average length about nineteen days; nearly seven-eighths inch in diameter, somewhat conical, compressed; color dark red over a yellowish background, finely mottled; stem of medium thickness, one and three-eighths inches long, adherent to the fruit; skin thin, tough, separates from the pulp; flesh pale yellowish-white, with colorless juice, tender, crisp, highly flavored, mild, aromatic, sweet; very good in quality; stone nearly free, large for the size of the fruit, ovate, flattened, slightly oblique, with smooth surfaces.