The cherries of New York

by U. P. Hedrick

USES OF THE CHERRY

The cherry is a delectable early-summer fruit, especially grateful as a refreshing dessert and much valued in cookery, when fresh, canned, preserved or dried, for the making of pies, tarts, sauces and confections. During the last few years, in America at least, the consumption of cherries has been enormously increased by the fashion of adding preserved cherries, as much for ornament as to give flavor, to many drinks and ices. The great bulk of the cherry crop now grown in America for commercial purposes is canned, the industry being more or less specialized in a few fruit regions. The demand for cherries for canning seems to be increasing greatly but unfortunately it calls for but few varieties, the Montmorency being the sort sought for among the Sour Cherries, while the hard-fleshed varieties of the Bigarreau type are in greatest demand among the Sweet Cherries.

The cherry, while a very common fruit in nearly all agricultural regions of America, does not hold the place in American markets as a fresh fruit that it does in the towns and cities of Europe. The great abundance of strawberries, raspberries, currants, gooseberries, dewberries, blackberries, as well as early varieties of tree fruits, makes keener here than abroad the competition in the fruit markets during cherry time. The fact, too, that market fruits in America are shipped long distances, for which the cherry is not well adapted, helps to explain the relatively small regard in which this fruit has been held for commercial purposes in the fresh state. In recent years, however, both Sweet Cherries and Sour Cherries, the former in particular, have been sent to the markets in far greater abundance, the impetus to their market value being due to a better product—better varieties, hence greater demand—and to greatly improved facilities for shipping and holding for sale.

In Europe several liqueurs are very commonly made from cherries both for home and commercial uses. Such is not the case in America, where, except in very limited quantities in which unfermented cherry juices are used in the home, this fruit is not used in liqueur-making. In some of the countries of Europe, wine is made from the juice; a spirit, kirschwasser,[1] is distilled from the fermented pulp as an article for both home and commerce; and ratafias and cordials are very generally flavored with cherries. In the Austrian province of Dalmatia a liqueur or cordial called maraschino[2] is made by a secret process of fermentation and distillation. This liqueur is imported in America in considerable quantities to flavor preservatives in which the home-grown cherries are prepared for use in various drinks and confections. No attempts have been made to grow the Marasca cherry on a commercial scale in America but undoubtedly it could be grown and, with the process of making maraschino discovered, an important use would be developed for cherries—all the more to be desired since the foreign maraschino is now grossly adulterated and imitated in this country. Both the fruits and seeds of cherries, especially of the Mahaleb, are steeped in spirits for food, drink and medicinal purposes. An oil used in making perfumes for scenting soaps and confectionery is also extracted from the seeds of the Mahaleb because of which use this species is often called the "Perfumed Cherry."

In the old herbals and pomologies much is made of the value of cherries for medicinal purposes. The fruit was supposed to be a sovereign remedy for various ailments of the digestive tract as well as for nervous disorders and epilepsy. The astringent leaves and bark, or extracts from them, were much used by the ancients in medicine and are still more or less employed both as home remedies and in the practice of medicine as mild tonics and sedatives. One of the active chemicals of the leaf, seed and bark is hydrocyanic acid to which is largely due the peculiar odor of these structures. A gum is secreted from the trunks of cherry trees, known in commerce as cerasin, which has some use in medicine and in various trades as well, especially as a substitute and as an adulterant of gum arabic.

At least three cultivated cherry trees produce wood of considerable value. The wood of the cherry is hard, close-grained, solid, durable, a handsome pale red, or brown tinged with red. Prunus avium, the Sweet Cherry, furnishes a wood which, if sufficient care be taken to season it, is of much value in cabinet-making and for the manufacture of musical instruments. Prunus mahaleb is a much smaller tree than the former but its wood, as much as there is of it, is even more valuable, being very hard and fragrant and dark enough in color to take on a beautiful mahogany-like polish. In France the wood of the Mahaleb cherry is held in high esteem, under the name Bois de St. Lucie, in cabinet-making and for toys, canes, handles and especially for the making of tobacco pipes. In Japan the wood of Prunus pseudocerasus is said to be in great demand for engraving and in making the blocks used in printing cloth and wall-paper. In America the wood of the orchard species of cherries is seldom used for domestic purposes, that of the wild species being so much more cheaply obtainable and serving all purposes quite as well.

To people who know it only for its fruit, the cherry does not appear particularly desirable as an ornamental. But wild and cultivated cherries furnish many beautiful trees in a genus peculiar for the beauty of its species. The color and abundance of the flowers, fruits and leaves of the cultivated cherries and the fact that they are prolific of forms with double flowers, weeping, fastigiate or other ornamental habits, make the several species of this plant valuable as ornamentals. Besides, they are vigorous and rapid in growth, hardy, easy of culture, comparatively free from pests and adapted to a great diversity of soils and climates. Both the ornamental and the edible cherries are very beautiful in spring when abundantly covered with flowers, which usually open with the unfolding leaves, as well as throughout the summer when overspread with lustrous green foliage and most of them are quite as conspicuously beautiful in the autumn when the leaves turn from green to light and dark tints of red. All will agree that a cherry tree in full fruit is a most beautiful object. In the winter when the leaves have fallen, some of the trees, especially of the ornamental varieties, are very graceful and beautiful, others are often picturesque, and even the somewhat stiff and formal Sweet Cherries are attractive plants in the garden or along the roadside.

Very acceptable jellies, sauces and preserves are made from several of the wild cherries in the Padus group. The peasantry of the Eastern Hemisphere have in times of need found them important foods as have also the American Indians at all times. The fruits of some of the species of Padus are quite commonly used in flavoring liqueurs and on both continents are sometimes fermented and distilled into a liqueur similar to kirschwasser. The bark of different parts of the trees of this group is valuable in medicine—at least is largely used. The trees of several species form handsome ornamentals and some of them are in commerce for the purpose. Prunus serotina, one of the group, because of the strength of its wood and the beautiful satiny polish which its surface is capable of receiving, is a valuable timber tree of American forests. For the products of the members of this group, as just set forth, the domestication of some of the species of Padus might well be pushed.

LITERATURE OF THE CHERRY

Despite the important part they have played in orcharding since the domestication of fruits in temperate zones, as shown by their history and their present popularity, pomological writers have singularly neglected cherries. There are relatively few European books devoted to them and in America, while there are treatises on all others of the common tree-fruits, the cherry alone seems not to have inspired some pomologist to print a book. Neither are the discussions in general pomologies as full and accurate as for other fruits. The reason for this neglect is that the cherry, until the last decade or two, has scarcely been a fruit of commerce, having been grown almost entirely for home use or at most for the local market. As a result of this neglect of the cherry by students of pomology, we have no authoritative nor serviceable system of classification of the varieties of cherries and the nomenclature of this fruit is in an appalling state of confusion, as a glance at the synonymy of some of the older varieties discussed in The Cherries of New York will show.