Plant · P-390

Sweet Cherry

Prunus avium

Sweet Cherry is the wild ancestor of the orchard cherry, spread across Europe and western Asia and naturalised wherever birds have carried its seed. It needs a proper cold winter to break dormancy evenly - without one the bloom comes ragged and the crop is poor - so it fruits reliably only where winters run cold, and struggles wherever they turn mild and summers long, hot and humid. Where the climate suits it the reward is real: sweet, juicy fruit eaten raw or cooked into pies and preserves, plus an edible seed and a gum that weeps from wounds in the bark. Bees work its flowers hard for pollen and nectar, and the fruit people do not pick still feeds plenty of birds and mammals.