The cherries of New York

by U. P. Hedrick

The Mazzard, or at least the Sweet Cherry, has probably been more or less used as a stock since the earliest cultivation of this fruit. The Greeks and Romans practiced budding and grafting centuries before Christ's time and when the cherry came to them as a domesticated fruit, at least three or four centuries before Christ, they undoubtedly made use of budding and grafting[40] to maintain varieties and in the case of the Sour Cherry, if they had it, and they probably did, to avoid the suckers that spring from the roots of the trees. The literature of fruit-growing is scant and fragmentary during the Middle Ages but beginning with the herbals in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries there are many treatises on fruits and botany and in several of these the use of the wild Sweet Cherry, the Mazzard, is mentioned.[41]

In America the Mazzard as a stock probably came into use soon after the establishment of Prince's nursery at Flushing, Long Island, about 1730, budding and grafting seeming to have been little practiced in the New World before the founding of this nursery.[42] The use of the Mazzard as a stock is mentioned probably for the first in Coxe's Fruit Trees,[43] the second American treatise on fruits, published in 1817, and again in Thacher's American Orchardist, published in 1822.[44] Both authors, as the foot-notes show, speak of the use of this stock as if it were in common use in American nurseries. Neither mentions the Mahaleb.

The Mahaleb, Prunus mahaleb, it will be remembered from the description previously given, is a bush or bush-like cherry, sometimes but not often attaining the height and port of a tree. The top is thick, with rather slender ramifying branches bearing small, green, smooth, glossy leaves, which resemble those of the apricot more than they do the leaves of either species of orchard cherries. The fruits are at first green, then yellowish, turning to red and at full maturity are shining, black and so hard, bitter and astringent as to be scarcely edible. This brief description of Prunus mahaleb shows that it is quite distinct from either our commonly cultivated Sweet Cherry, Prunus avium, or the Sour Cherry, Prunus cerasus, differing from either much more than the two edible species differ from each other. It is quite as far removed from the Sweet or the Sour Cherry botanically as the apple is from the pear, the quince, or the thorn and if anything more distantly related than orchard cherries are to plums. One would expect the wood structure of the Mahaleb to differ from that of Sweet or Sour Cherries very materially and that even if the union proved in budding or grafting wholly normal that there would be some difficulty in the proper passage of nutritive solutions between stock and cion. This cherry, as we have seen, is propagated almost entirely from seed though it may easily be grown from layers, cuttings and suckers. The American supply of Mahaleb stock comes from France.

The Mahaleb seems to have come into use as a stock for other cherries in France having been first mentioned for this purpose by Duhamel du Monceau in his Traite des Arbres Fruitiers in 1768.[45]

Miller in his Gardener's Dictionary, 1754, describes the Mahaleb cherry and says it was "Cultivated in 1714 by the Duchess of Beaufort." This seems to be the first mention of its culture in England though Gerarde in The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes describes it. Neither mentions its use as a stock. In fact, it seems not to have been mentioned as a stock in England until 1824 when Loudon in the Encyclopedia of Gardening speaks of it as "the most effectual dwarfing stock."[46]

It was not until after the middle of the Nineteenth Century that the Mahaleb came into use in America, none of the horticultural writers in the first half of the last century, as Cobbett, 1803; McMahon, 1806; Coxe, 1817; Thacher, 1822; Prince, 1828; Kenrick, 1833; Manning, 1838; Thomas, 1846; Floy, 1846, nor Cole, 1849, having mentioned the Mahaleb though nearly all speak of the Mazzard as the stock upon which cherries are budded. Downing, in 1845, makes first mention of the Mahaleb as a stock in the New World;[47] Thomas in his second edition, 1851, recommends it as a stock to dwarf cherries;[48] Barry, 1852, says that Mahaleb stock is imported from Europe;[49] while Elliott, in 1854, also speaks of it as a dwarfing stock.[50] From this date on the Mahaleb is mentioned in all American works on pomology in which stocks for cherries are discussed.

PRUNUS MAHALEB

Pains have been taken to show the exact date the Mahaleb began to be used as a stock in America. The quotations show that this was about 1850. They show, too, that at first and for a long time its only use was as a dwarfing stock. But now the Mahaleb has almost wholly superseded the Mazzard as a stock for all Sweet and Sour Cherries. Not many cherries were propagated on the new stock until after 1860 when its use, if we may judge from the accounts of fruit-growing, began to be general and it grew so rapidly in favor that by 1880 it was more popular than the Mazzard and in another decade had almost wholly taken the place of the latter. Probably 95 per centum of the cherries grown in this country are budded on the Mahaleb. Why has the Mahaleb supplanted the Mazzard? This is the question that immediately comes to mind and to the discussion of which we proceed.

There is no question but that it is much easier to grow cherry trees on Mahaleb stock in the nursery than on Mazzard and that usually a better looking tree can be delivered to the fruit-grower on the first-named stock. Seedlings of both stocks are imported from Europe and those of the Mahaleb are usually cheaper. These reasons are sufficient for the exclusive use of Mahaleb by nurserymen, and, were it certain that the Mahaleb is the best stock for the fruit-grower, all hands might forthwith renounce the Mazzard. In what respects is it easier to grow cherries on the Mahaleb in the nursery than on the Mazzard?