The cherries of New York

by U. P. Hedrick

Theophrastus, to whom Linnaeus gave the title "Father of Botany," writing about 300 years before the Christian era in his History of Plants, is, according to botanical historians, the first of the Greek writers to mention the cherry. His statement is as follows:—

"The cherry is a peculiar tree, of large size, some attaining the height of twenty-four cubits, rather thick, so that they may measure two cubits in circumference at the base. The leaf is like that of the mespilus, rather firm and broader, the color of the foliage such that the tree may be distinguished from others at a good distance. The bark, by its color, smoothness and thickness, is like that of tilia. The flower [meaning, the cluster of flowers] is white, resembling that of the pear and mespilus, consisting of small [separate] flowers. The fruit is red, similar to that of diospyros [but what his diospyros was no one knows] of the size of a faba [perhaps nelumbo seed], which is hard, but the cherry is soft. The tree grows in the same situations as tilia; by streams."[14]

From this passage we gather that the cherry Theophrastus knew was the Sweet Cherry, Prunus avium; the description shows it to be the same large, tall tree now naturalized in open woods and along roadsides in many parts of the United States. From the fact that Theophrastus describes the tree and the bark in more detail than the fruit we may assume that the cherry was more esteemed in ancient Greece as a timber-tree than as a fruit-tree. Curiously enough the name the Greeks at this time used for the Sweet Cherry is now applied to Prunus cerasus, the Sour Cherry.

"Kerasos" was the Sweet Cherry in ancient Greece and from kerasos came cerasus, used by many botanists as the name of the genus. That the Sweet Cherry should by the use of avium be denominated the "bird cherry" is clear since birds show much discrimination between cherries, but why the Sour Cherry should be given the specific name cerasus, first applied to the Sweet Cherry, is not apparent.

Pages are written in the old pomologies and botanical histories as to the origin of the word cerasus. Pliny's statement that Lucullus called the cherry cerasus from the town from which he obtained it, Kerasun in Pontus, on the Black Sea, is, in the light of all who have since looked into the matter, a misconception. To the contrary, commentators now agree that the town received its name from the cherry which grows most abundantly in the forests in that part of Asia Minor. The name, according to all authorities, is very ancient—a linguistic proof of the antiquity of the cherry.

To sum up, the cherry comes into literature first from Greece in the writings of Theophrastus. There can be but little doubt, however, but that it had been cultivated for centuries before Theophrastus wrote. Whether one or both of the two cherries were domesticated by the Greeks, beginning with their civilization, or whether cultivated cherries came to Greece from Asia Minor, is not now known. It is very probable that some of the several varieties grown in Greece came under cultivation through domestication of wild plants; others were introduced from regions farther east.

THE SWEET CHERRY POSSIBLY THE PARENT OF THE SOUR CHERRY

A digression may be permitted here to state a hypothesis suggested by De Candolle[15] which should interest both fruit-growers and plant-breeders. De Candolle, while considering the two species of cultivated cherries to be now quite distinct, suggests that, since they differ essentially but little in their characters and since their original habitats were in the same region, it is probable that one species came from the other. He surmises, since Prunus avium is the commoner in the original home, is generally the more vigorous of the two, has spread much farther and probably at a much earlier date from the primal habitation in Asia Minor than Prunus cerasus, that the latter, the Sour Cherry, is derived from the Sweet Cherry. In the future breeding of cherries confirmatory evidence of such a relationship may be obtained though, should none be found, the negation should go for naught and the supposition can only remain an interesting and plausible hypothesis.

THE CHERRY IN ITALY

Pliny attempts to give the first full account of cultivated cherries and, even though among his statements are several inaccuracies, yet he may be said to have made a very good beginning of a flora of cultivated cherries for he names and describes ten varieties. The fact that there were as many as ten cherries in Italy at the time Pliny wrote, less than a century after the return of Lucullus from Pontus, is strong evidence that the cherry in Italy antedates Lucullus. Besides, it is hardly probable that Pliny knew and described all of the cherries to be found in the whole of his country. But even if these ten comprise the entire number, those who know how extremely difficult it is to introduce new plants in a country with the facilities we have in our day, will doubt that all of the cherries in Pliny's account could have been introduced in Italy 1900 years ago and have come under general cultivation, as according to Pliny they had, within the short space of a century. The following quotation, then, must be taken as an account of the cherries grown in Italy in the first century after Christ with little weight given to the historical evidence presented.[16]