Hitherto British foresters have treated the wild cherry with unmerited neglect. Nobody thinks of planting geans, except here and there for ornament; nor is there any regular market for the timber. Yet that is of high quality and very ornamental for indoor work, having a fine silky grain and a charming pinkish colour. Mr. Elwes, who has used it for panelling, says that when soaked in lime water it assumes a richer tint, resembling unstained mahogany. It has the merit of seasoning readily, and never warping.
The pews in Gibside Church, Northumberland, were made of cherry wood in 1812, and are reported by Mr. A. C. Forbes to be perfectly sound and well-fitting still. Wild cherry trees are seldom felled till they show signs of decay, and as they are not long-lived—a century being about the outside span of their vigorous life—the quality of the timber should not be estimated from trees more than sixty or seventy years old. The growth is rapid, and the tree may be drawn up in shelter to a great height; there is a specimen in Windsor Park, near the Bishopsgate, which was 93 feet high in 1904, with a girth of 9 feet 3 inches.
In the Trees of Great Britain and Ireland, Messrs. Elwes and Henry have a plate representing an extraordinary cherry tree growing in Savernake Forest, with a wild spread of branches and a bole, covered with enormous burrs, measuring 12 feet 7 inches in girth at 4 feet from the ground. A Scottish counterpart to the Savernake tree may be seen at Gribton, near Dumfries, which, though only 56 feet high, has a girth of 12 feet 8 inches, with a branch spread of 70 feet. A massive gean tree at Mauldslie Castle, Lanarkshire, was 52 feet high in 1899, with a girth of 13 feet 2 inches. It is fast decaying, nor is the iron band with which its fork has been braced likely to prolong its existence beyond the natural term.
The wild cherry is the parent of all the cultivated varieties, many of which are derived from a high antiquity. Pliny enumerates eight varieties, including those with black and red fruits, and one which he describes as appearing half-ripe, which seems to indicate what we know as the bigarreau cherry. No doubt these varieties were of Asiatic origin, the Chinese and Persians having long preceded European nations in the craft of horticulture. The Rev. R. Walsh, writing in the Transactions of the Horticultural Society, 1826, described "an amber-coloured transparent cherry of a delicious flavour. It grows in the woods in the interior of Asia Minor, particularly on the banks of the Sakari—the ancient Sangarius. The trees attain gigantic size; they are ascended by perpendicular ladders suspended from the lowest branches. I measured the trunk of one; the circumference was 5 feet, and the height where the first branches issued 40 feet; from the summit of the highest branches was from 90 feet to 100 feet, and this immense tree was loaded with fruit."
Compare with this the produce of a single cherry tree during the year 1913 at Faourg, near Avenche, in the Swiss canton of Vaud. It took three men fifteen days to gather the fruit, which weighed in the aggregate two tons. The fruit is of a small and red variety, used for making kirsch; and it was reckoned that the crop of this tree would produce 200 litres of the spirit, which, at 5 francs a litre, amounts to £40.
The scientific name for the gean is Prunus avium—the birds' plum; but what we mean when we speak of "bird cherry" is a very different, though nearly kindred, species—Prunus padus, a pretty native tree of small stature which is spread all over northern Europe and Asia. It is very beautiful when covered with its white flowers in long racemes—pity they last such a short time—but the little black fruits are of no use to any creature bigger than a pheasant. Anglers in Norwegian rivers are familiar with the white plumes of bird cherry, waving like fine lace-work from the grim cliffs overhanging many a green dal.
Lovely as the gean tree is when in full blossom, some of the double-flowering Japanese cherries are even more so, and they have this advantage, that the display is not nearly so fleeting. What may be the wild parent of these cultivated forms I am unable to say; but Mr. J. H. Veitch, writing from Yokohama, indicates that some, at least, are not cherries at all:
"The cherries in this neighbourhood are magnificent. Tinted photographs give a very complete idea of their beauty; one looks up and walks under a ceiling of the softest pink. At Mukojima a row of these cherries a mile long by the river bank, in some places faced by a row on the opposite side of the road, is a sight it will be difficult to forget. Cherries are, in fact, to be seen everywhere in and around Tokio, and it would be difficult to imagine anything more beautiful for the few days they are in flower. The species is known scientifically as Prunus Mume; it is really an apricot."[13]
