Fruit-growing could not have greatly prospered, however, in the centuries of strife with the barbarians which succeeded Roman rule in England; and a revival of cherry culture did not take place until the reintroduction of Christianity and the establishment of monasteries where, undisturbed by wars, the monks became notable horticulturists. They not only had opportunity in the comparative peace in which their lives were cast to grow fruit but many of them were men of superior intelligence and skill and from intercourse with the continental countries learned what plants were worth growing and how to grow them—the monasteries were the experiment stations of the times. Undoubtedly the monks in bringing to England treasures from the continent did not forget fruits and among them cherries.
Passing by a considerable number of references which could be cited to show that cherries of one kind and another were cultivated in Britain from at least as early a date as the Ninth Century, we come to the discussion of this fruit by the herbalists of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Of the three great English herbalists, Turner published his work in 1538; Gerarde's, printed in 1596, was revised and greatly improved by Johnson in 1633; Parkinson's Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris, or Park-in-Suns Earthly Paradise—the author evidently a punster—was published in 1629. All of these contain as full botanical and pomological discussions of cherries as knowledge then permitted.
It must not be thought, by those unacquainted with the plant-lore of the times, that the cherry received consideration only from the pens of Turner, Gerarde, and Parkinson. During the time covered by the lives of these three men a score or more of books were written in English on botany and pomology in which accounts were given of the cherry, all showing the esteem in which this fruit was held in England during and before the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Space permits comments on the account of the cherry given by but one of these Elizabethan herbalists, and of the several Gerarde's seems best suited to our purpose.
We have chosen Gerarde because he treats the cherry more fully than do the other writers of the period and because he was a compiler and a translator, having, as he quaintly says, "perused divers Herbals set fourth in other languages;" thus from Gerarde we obtain a conception of cherries growing on the continent as well as those growing in England. Students of the English herbals say that Gerarde translated, copied and adapted from Matthiolus, whose book we have noted, but more particularly from Dodoens who in 1554 published in Antwerp A History of Plants. These two worthies, in turn, had borrowed very freely from still more ancient writers—Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Columella and others. As might be suspected, errors centuries old were passed down, yet each new translation or compilation contains much added information and is far freer from error. In particular, Gerarde seems to have been a wise compiler and adapter and to have combined a large measure of first-hand practical knowledge with his borrowings from others. This is especially true of what he writes concerning cherries, a fruit with which he seems to have been very familiar.
The following is Gerarde's account, with interpolations by the author:
"The ancient Herbalists have set down four kinds of Cherry trees; the first is great and wild, the second tame or of the garden, the third hath sour fruit, the fourth is that which is called in Latin Chamaecerasus, or the dwarfe Cherry tree. The later writers have found divers sorts more, some bringing forth great fruit, others lesser; some with white fruit, some with blacke, others of the colour of black bloud, varying infinitely according to the clymat and country where they grow."
The four cherries which Gerarde says the "ancient herbalists have set down" are, it is easy to see: first, the wild Prunus avium; second, cultivated sweet varieties of Prunus avium; third, the sour Prunus cerasus; fourth, the Dwarf Cherry, Prunus fruticosa.
"The English Cherry tree groweth to a high and great tree, the body whereof is of a mean bignesse, which is parted above into very many boughes, with a barke somewhat smooth, of a brown crimson colour, tough and pliable; the substance or timber is also brown in the middle, and the outer part is somewhat white: the leaves be great, broad, long, set with veins or nerves, and sleightly nicked about the edges: the floures are white, of a mean bigness, consisting of five leaves, and having certain threds in the middle of the like colour. The Cherries be round, hanging upon long stems or footstalks, with a stone in the middest which is covered with a pulp or soft meat; the kernell thereof is not unpleasant to the taste, though somewhat bitter."
This is Prunus avium, which is very generally wild in Britain—the Gean of the English.
"The Flanders Cherry tree differeth not from our English Cherry tree in Stature or form of leaves or floures, the only difference is, that this tree brings forth his fruit sooner and greater than the other, wherefore it may be called in Latine, Cerasus praecox, sive Belgica."