The ninth and tenth of Pliny's cherries, the Macedonian and the Chamaecerasus, are probably one and the same, since but one cherry that could possibly answer to the descriptions given could have been in Italy at the time Pliny wrote. The cherry described, then, was almost beyond doubt Prunus fruticosa Pallas, a synonym of which is Prunus chamaecerasus Jacquin, perpetuating the name used by Pliny. This is the European Dwarf Cherry, or Ground Cherry, which is now and was probably then a wild plant in parts of Italy and which is very well described by "a tree that is very small, and rarely exceeds three cubits in height."
We have accredited Pliny with having first described cherries in Italy and discredited his account of their introduction in his own country, but chiefly on inferential evidence. Just a few words of direct proof that the cherry was long in cultivation by the Romans before Lucullus and we have done with the introduction of the cherry into Italy and have filled another gap between Theophrastus and our own times. Marcus Terentius Varro (B. C. 117-27), one of the illustrious scholars of ancient Rome, sometimes called the father of Roman learning, in his eightieth year, as he tells us in his first chapter, wrote a book on farming—one, which, by the way, may be read with profit by modern farmers.[17] In book 1, chapter XXXIX, he tells when to graft cherries, discussing the process not as if it or the cherry were new or little known but as if the cherry were as commonplace as the other agricultural crops of the times. Varro effectually disproves Pliny to whose mis-statement we have given so much space only because for nearly 2000 years it has been generally accepted as the truth.
The gaps in the history of the cherry are long. Athenaeus,[18] Tertullian,[19] Ammianus,[20] and St. Jerome,[21] Roman writers of the Third and Fourth Centuries, mention cherries but chiefly to repeat and perpetuate Pliny's errors. It was not until the Sixteenth Century—a lapse of 1400 years—that an attempt was again made to describe in full cultivated cherries. Sometime in this century, Matthiolus (1487-1577), a Tuscan and one of the eminent naturalists not only of Italy but of the world in the Middle Ages, in translating and annotating the medical works of the Greek writer Dioscorides, made a list of the fruit-trees then grown in Italy. As the second descriptive list of cherries this contribution of Matthiolus might be worth reprinting were it not, as in Pliny, that but few of his varieties can be certainly made out. He does, however, make a number of additions to Pliny's list but space does not permit a consideration of these; especially since Gerarde, writing less than a century later in English, so well amplifies Matthiolus that we shall print his account.
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.
CHERRIES IN ENGLAND
Cultivated cherries came to England with the Romans. Prunus avium is indigenous in Great Britain but probably no care worthy the name cultivation was given these wild trees by the ancient Britons. Pliny states that the cherry was carried from Rome to Britain before the middle of the First Century—meaning probably some improved variety. In no part of the world does the cherry take more kindly to the soil than in England and no doubt this fruit became firmly established in Kent, where the Romans settled, before the downfall of the southern invaders. With the expulsion of the Romans and the subsequent influx of barbarians, agriculture, especially gardening and fruit-growing, became almost a lost art but still it is not probable that the cherry was wholly lost to cultivation during the Teutonic invasions of Britain.