WILD RED CHERRY
(Prunus Pennsylvanica)
In addition to the name wild red cherry by which this tree is known in most parts of its range, it is called bird cherry in Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa; red cherry in Maine and Rhode Island; fire cherry in New York and many other localities; pin cherry in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Michigan, Iowa, and North Dakota; pigeon cherry in Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Ontario, and North Dakota; and wild cherry in Tennessee and New York. Its range extends from Newfoundland to Hudson bay, west to British Columbia, south through the Rocky Mountains to Colorado, and in the East along the Appalachian ranges to North Carolina and Tennessee. It reaches its largest size among the Big Smoky mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina.
It is ordinarily a tree thirty or forty feet high, and from eight to ten inches in diameter, though trunks are sometimes twenty inches through. It grows fast, but is very short-lived. Many stands disappear in thirty years or less, but individuals survive two or three times that long, if they stand in open ground. One of its names is fire cherry, and that fitly describes it. Like paper birch and lodgepole pine, it follows forest fires where the ground is laid bare by the burning. Nature seems to have made peculiar provisions whereby this tree clothes barren tracts which have been recently burned. In the first place, it is a prolific seeder. Its small, red cherries are borne by bushels on very young trees. Birds feed on them almost exclusively while they last, and the seeds are scattered over the surrounding country. They have such thick shells that few germinate unless they pass through a moderate fire, which cracks the shells, or at least they do not sprout until they come in direct contact with mineral soil. When a fire burns a forest, thousands of the cherry seedlings spring up. Many persons have wondered where they come from so quickly. They were already scattered among the forest leaves before the fire passed. The heat crazed their shells, and the burning of the leaflitter let them down on the mineral soil where they germinated and soon came up by thousands. The case is a little different with paper birch and with aspen, which are also fire trees. Their seeds cannot pass through fire without perishing, and when birches and aspens follow a fire it means that the seeds were scattered by the wind after the passing of the fire. Doubtless cherry seeds are often scattered after the fire has passed; but it is believed that most of those which spring up so quickly have passed through the fire without being destroyed.
This small cherry is one of the means by which damage by forest fires is repaired. The tree is of little value for lumber or even for fuel; but it acts as a nurse tree—that is, it shelters and protects the seedlings of other species until they obtain a start. By the time the cherry trees die, the seedlings which they have nursed are able to take care of themselves, and a young forest of valuable species is established.
Except in this indirect way, the wild red cherry is of little use to man. The wood is soft, light, and of pleasing color, but trees are nearly always too small to be worked into useful articles. About the only industry of which there is any record, which draws supplies from this source, is the manufacture of pipe stems. The straight, slender, bright-barked branches are cut into requisite lengths and bored endwise, and serve for stems of cheap pipes, and occasionally for those more expensive. The bark, like that of most cherries, is marked by dark bands running part way round the stems. These are known as lenticels, and exist in the bark of most trees, but they are usually less conspicuous in others than in cherry. It is this characteristic marking which gives the cherry pipe stem its value.
Wild red cherry blooms from May to July, depending on latitude and elevation, and the fruit ripens from July to September. The cherries hang in bunches, are bright red, quite sour, and the seed is the largest part. They are occasionally made into jelly, wine, and form the basis of certain cough syrups.
West India Cherry (Prunus sphÆrocarpa) grows near the shores of Biscayne bay, Florida. It there blooms in November and the fruit ripens the next spring. The tree attains a height of from twenty-five to thirty feet, and a diameter of five or six inches. When grown in the open at Miami, Florida, it is larger, and is much liked as an ornament. The thin, smooth bark is brown, tinged with red, and is marked by large conspicuous lenticels. The wood is hard and light, and of light clear red color. It is too scarce to be of much importance, but paper knives, napkin rings, and other novelties made of it are sold in souvenir stores in southern Florida. Its range extends south to Brazil.
Willowleaf Cherry (Prunus salicifolia) is a small tree, also called Mexican cherry, is more common south of the United States than in this country, ranging as far south as Peru. It is found on some of the mountains of southern New Mexico and Arizona.
Laurel Cherry (Prunus caroliniana) is a southern species which sticks close to the coast in most of its range from South Carolina to Texas. It has many names, among them wild peach, wild orange, mock orange, evergreen cherry, mock olive, and Carolina cherry. Leaves hang two years, and the fruit remains nearly one. The latter is black and about half an inch long. The withered leaves are poisonous if eaten by cattle. The tree is thirty or forty feet high, and eight or ten inches in diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, color light brown to dark, rich brown, sometimes of much beauty, but no record has been found of any use for it. The tree is often planted for ornament.
Wild Plum (Prunus americana) is found from New Jersey to Montana, southward to New Mexico and Texas, and extends to Florida and Mexico. Its range covers about a million square miles. There are seven or more species of wild plums in the United States. The fruit of all of them is edible. They have been planted accidentally or otherwise in many localities where they were not found before the country was settled. The plum was an important fruit in the country’s early history. The pioneers gathered wild fruits before planted orchards came into bearing, and the plum was one of the best which nature supplied. Early travelers among the Indians in the South frequently spoke of Indian peaches. Such references have led some to believe that the peach was native in that region, but it is safe to conclude that what was called the peach was really some species of wild plum. These fruits were among the earliest to become domesticated. In fact, they were abundant about the sites of Indian towns and old fields, where the savages had scattered seeds without any purpose on their part of planting trees; and early settlers imitated the Indians, and plums were soon growing in the vicinity of most of the cabins. As a forest tree, it usually thrived best on the banks of streams, for there it could find more sunshine than in the deep woods, and it bore much more fruit. The ranges of several species of plums overlapped, and different sizes and colors of fruit were found in the same locality even before white men assisted the spread of species. The common plum, known to botanists as Prunus americana, is recognized under many names among laymen; among these names are yellow plum, red plum, horse plum, hog plum, August plum, native plum, and goose plum. Usually the plum’s skin is red, and the flesh yellow, which accounts for its names, both red and yellow. The tree ranges in height from twenty to thirty-five feet, and from five to ten inches in diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, and dark rich-brown. It is suitable for turnery and small novelties, but little of it has been used.
Canada Plum (Prunus nigra) appears to be the most northern member of the plum group. It grows from Newfoundland to Manitoba, and south into the northern tier of states. Its range has been much extended by planting, and a number of varieties have appeared. It is twenty or thirty feet high, and five to eight inches in diameter. Flowers appear in April and May, and the fruit is ripe in September and October. The plums are about an inch long, orange-red in color, with yellow flesh. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong. Those who cultivate this tree often do so for the beauty of the flowers, rather than for the value of the fruit. The wood is not used for commercial purposes.
Black Sloe (Prunus umbellata), known also as southern bullace plum, hog plum, and wild plum, ranges from South Carolina, round the coast through Florida, to Louisiana and up the Mississippi valley into Arkansas. The tree is fifteen or twenty feet high and from six to ten inches in diameter. The fruit ripens from July to September, is black when ripe, and often nearly an inch long. The people where it grows use it for jelly. It is not reported that the wood is used for any purpose.
Western Plum (Prunus subcordata) grows west of the Cascade mountains from southern Oregon to central California. It is often a low bush, but at its best forms a tree twenty feet high and six inches in diameter, but its wood is of no economic importance. Its deep, purple-red plums ripen in autumn and are an excellent wild fruit, juicy and tart. During the fruit season the plum thickets were formerly infested by both bears and Indians, and many a fight for possession took place, with victory sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other. The white inhabitants now make jam and jelly of the fruit.
Alleghany Sloe (Prunus allegheniensis) is so named because it is best developed among the Alleghany mountains of Pennsylvania. The tree is eighteen or twenty feet high and six or eight inches in diameter. The wood is without value for commercial purposes, but the tree’s fruit has some local importance. It ripens about the middle of August, and is somewhat less than an inch in diameter, with dark, reddish-purple skin, covering yellow flesh.
Chickasaw Plum (Prunus angustifolia) is a well-known wild plum of the South from Delaware to Texas, and north to Kansas. Its natural range is not known, because it has been so widely planted, accidentally or otherwise, near farm houses and in fence corners. Its bright, red fruit goes only to local markets. Negroes gather most of the crop in the South. The wood is not considered to have any value, but, in common with other plums, it possesses qualities which fit it for many small articles.
Garden Wild Plum (Prunus hortulana) is supposed to have originated in Kentucky from a cross between the Chickasaw plum and the common wild plum (Prunus americana). It has spread from Virginia to Texas. The largest trees are thirty feet high and a foot in diameter. The fruit ripens in September and October, is deep red or yellow, with hard, austere, thin flesh, quite sour. The fruit is called wild goose or simply goose plum in Tennessee and Kentucky. Horticulturists have made many experiments with this plum.
Cocoa Plum (Chrysobalanus icaco), also called gopher plum, grows in southern Florida, and its insipid fruit is seldom eaten except by negroes and Seminole Indians. There is little sale for it in the local markets. Trees are sometimes thirty feet high and a foot in diameter. The light brown wood is heavy, hard, and strong, but it is seldom used. The tree grows in Africa and South America as well as in Florida.
Wild red cherry branch
