Cherry Tree

It is one of the progenitors of several cultivated cherry trees, especially from the black fruits, and it is native to Europe, western Asia and north of Africa.

It is a very vigorous tree, up to 30m height, conic, with young branches open and verticilliated, that with time form a round summit.

The bark is beautiful, grayish or reddish, with horizontal prominent stripes of lenticel brown cicatrices, that exfoliates in strips like the birch.

If it is cultivated as a forestry tree, it forms long uniform trunks of brown-golden wood, slightly flagrant; it is highly appreciated for luxury cabinetwork, turnery, sheets, counters and ornamental boxes.

The sharp buds are of a brilliant brown-red color and the oblong sharp toothed leaves of 7-10 cm long, with short channel petioles, turn yellow and red in autumn. It has very abundant white flowers, 2,5-3 cm diameter grouped in racemes of peduncles of 3-5 cm long, and the fruit, that when ripen is red or red-blackish, almost spherical of 2-2,5 cm diameter.

The cultivation "Plena", one of the best white double cherry tree, reaches a height of 20 m, the flowers have a diameter of 3 cm and are very abundant. Almost never it produces a fruit.

Encyclopedia BLUME, Trees, wood and forest of the world, H. Edlin/M.Nimmo, page 176.