Description:
The wild cherry is a tall, handsome, deciduous tree that can grow to 100ft (30m). In spring, when covered with a mass of flowers, they are a spectacular sight attracting many insects. |
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Myths and Legends |
Facts, Figures and Uses |
The cherry is quite common in folklore. It is strangely mixed up with the cuckoo, including the tradition that the cuckoo must eat three good meals of cherries before he is allowed to stop singing.
The saying “all or nothing” means the same as“the whole tree or not a cherry on it”, while “to make two bites of a cherry” is to divide something too small to be worth dividing.
Cherry trees are sometimes planted in Japan and in other countries in early August in memory of those who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In Denmark and in Lithuania the cherry was thought to be the hiding place of demons. In Serbia the ‘Vila’ (a kind of fairy or elf) could be found, if needed, near the cherry, as they chose it to dance around. |
Wild cherry grows rapidly to full size, and its wood is used to make fine furniture, veneers and sweet-smoking cherry pipes.
The wood is of good quality, though larger trees sometimes suffer from heart rot.
The cherry, like other fruit trees, has been crossed and selected to produce better fruiting varieties. Many of these derive from the wild cherry, or gean, which is still used as the rootstock on which its more productive relatives are grown.
The fruit can be eaten fresh or prepared in a variety of ways, and is also used in syrups and cough medicines.
Liqueurs are distilled from the fermented pulp of fruit and stone. |
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