Gean or Cherry

Gean or Cherry - Prunus avium

Prunus is Latin for the plum. Along with the peach, almond, cherry and laurel it makes up this scientific group or genus of 400 species, most of them native to the Northern Hemisphere. The species name, avium, comes from the Latin avis, a bird - birds love cherries.

Two species of cherry are native to Britain. The wild cherry or Gean is the more important and is of high timber value and fast growing.

The bird cherry - Prunus padus - is smaller, doing best on wetter acid soils in N. England & Scotland.

Native to Europe, North Africa and Western Asia, P. avium occurs wild throughout Britain although its distribution is strangely patchy.

Wild cherry grows best on soils developed on the thicker layers of drift over chalk and limestone and on deep flushed soils on lower valley slopes. Parts of the Sussex and Wiltshire Downs, the Chilterns and the Cotswolds are particularly good growing areas.

Pronounced with a hard "g", Gean is a name widely used in Scotland and probably derives from the old Italian word guina, a type of cherry.

This versatile tree combines beauty and practicality. Besides giving an eye-catching display of white bloom in Spring and fiery foliage in Autumn, it is a valuable, fast-growing timber species.

The attractive white flowers are borne in hanging clusters on short shoots. The flowers open about April - a cold, late Spring makes for a spectacular show as it delays the opening of the leaves but not the blossom which stands out against the framework of bare branches.

Cherry leaves have long stalks and are elliptical shaped with a serrated edge tapering to a point. In Autumn, they turn from mid-green to vivid hues of orange, crimson and purple.

The fruit ripen rapidly to a black colour in June, providing a feast for the birds which help disperse the seeds.

Wild cherry has a peculiar, distinctive, smooth bark, reddish or purple-brown in colour with a metallic copper sheen. It is punctuated with large lenticels or breathing pores in bands around the trunks.

In the wild, root suckers often develop around mature trees and eventually grow as large as the parents, forming clumps or small woodlands.

With its attractive white flowers and reddish Autumn colour, it is increasingly planted as a timber tree in lowland Britain.. Gean is easy to establish. For a broad leaved tree, it has a short rotation or growing life and may become senile by 60.

Newly planted saplings are sensitive to competition from weeds so need weeding in the early establishment years. They respond well in tree shelters which protect them from browsing deer and provide a favourable micro-climate.

Cherries are prone to bacterial canker. Stem and branch wounds may exude a curious clear, protective, yellowish gum reminiscent of resin in conifers but without the smell.

Under the British Hardwoods Improvement Programme (BHIP), supported by the Royal Forestry Society, promising strains of wild cherry are selected and propagated to grow better timber and resist common diseases.

Cherry wood goes mainly for furniture making with large logs sliced into decorative veneers. Smokers once cherished their cherry wood pipes and a few are still made.

Cherries cultivated for their fruit are derived from two species - the sweet ones are P. avium and the acid morello varieties are P. cerasus. Duke cherries are probably crosses between these two. Eating varieties are usually grafted onto wild cherry root stocks.