Nanking Cherry: Prunus tomentosa
The Nanking Cherry showed up
on a list of edible hedge species, but I didn't know if the
plant was actually a cherry botanically and (more importantly) what it
tasted like. Uncommon
Fruits Worthy of Attention, as usual, cut right to the
chase.
Is the Nanking Cherry a cherry?
Nanking Cherry (Prunus tomentosa)
is in the same genus as cherries, plums, and peaches, but is a
different species than either sweet cherries (P. avium) or sour cherries (P. cerasus).
This means that your Nanking Cherries can't be pollinated by either of
these species, just as sweet cherries won't pollinate sour cherries and
vice versa.
Does the Nanking Cherry taste like a
cherry?
Flavor of the Nanking Cherry seems to be extremely variable, probably
due to the fact that American nurseries grow the plants from
seed. In stark contrast, the Nanking Cherry is the most common
garden fruit in the Russian Far East, where many named varieties
exist. Some varieties taste like tart cherries and others like
sweet cherries (though a quick search of the internet suggests that the
former flavor predominates among unnamed varieties in the U.S.)
How do I plant my Nanking Cherry?
Since Nanking Cherries are shrubs or small trees reaching between nine
and fifteen feet tall and wide, they should be planted about fifteen
feet apart. Alternatively, they can be planted four feet apart
and trimmed into a hedge. Be sure to plant more than one Nanking
Cherry for cross-pollination. Place them in an area with full sun
and well-drained soil.
Where can I grow the Nanking Cherry?
They can be planted in zones 3 to 6, which makes them a good choice in
more northern areas where traditional cherries can't be grown.
How do I propagate the Nanking Cherry?
If you don't mind the plants not breeding true, seeds are easiest (and
will grow a long, drought-resistant taproot, absent in plants grown
from cuttings.) Remove the seeds from the pulp, air dry slightly,
then stratify for three months. Seedlings bear by the third
year. Alternatively, take softwood cuttings when the fruit is
ripening, treat the base with rooting hormone, then keep the cuttings
under a mist. Or take 8 to 12 inch hardwood cuttings of one year
old wood, planting in well-drained soil in the fall or spring.
Why is the Nanking Cherry a
permaculture favorite?
Permaculture emphasizes making maximum use of your gardening
space. Since the Nanking Cherry is a shrub, it can fit into parts
of the garden where a standard cherry couldn't grow. Using the
Nanking Cherry as an edible hedge plant has forest
pasture implications as well.
Are you growing them? I'd like to find a named variety (or someone's backyard
shrub) that tastes like a sweet cherry, but in the meantime I bought a couple of seedlings to get us started. If you've tried them and have tasty plants, I'd love to
trade for some seeds or cuttings!
| This post is part of our Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Previous post: 2year plants I have two 2-3 yr plants side by side . About 5 ft tall they flower each spring but I have yet to see any berries. Any one have a suggestion? Comment by Jeff — Saturday afternoon, October 30th, 2010
they flower at the same time and should be the same species. I ordered 6 plants from gurneys I planted 3 plants in one hole and 3 in another. They are side by side and get plenty of sunlight . I live in zone 7 in Virginia close to Virginia beach. Are these plants self pollinators?
I grew up with NanKing Cherries in our wind-break (shelterbelt) in W. Kansas. They were the first plant to meet the northwind, in a wind-break 6 tree-rows deep, helping to gradually send the wind over and above the house.
They were extremely beautiful in the spring, while in bloom. Then the extended family made a ad hoc holiday of coming to pick the cherries for jellies and pies when the cherries were ripened.
They reseed themselves.
I moved to the other end of the state. About five years ago, I planted them out of sentiment for the plant. In this day and age of high food prices, I also found it necessary to make my yard a food producer, which thus included NanKing cherries. In late summer, I broadcast the seeds on empty lots nearby that seldom got mowed. Will be interesting to see what comes up.
Stratification was my only question. They indeed need to stratify. Anyone needing un-stratified seeds, notify twelvepackterry@yahoo.com (not my real name, lol, and a junk email address). I will eventually get to you if you title it "NanKing Cherries", but it may take time since I rarely check that address.
Okay, I have to admit to cheating, as I live in Japan, so we certainly should be able to grow Nanking Cherries here. They are known as Yusura Ume in Japan (the word Ume being generally used to describe a plum, not a cherry) and we originally got our single plant about three years ago because my (Japanese) wife remembered eating the fruit from a tree in their garden as a child. For the first couple of years we had some blossom and a small number of fruit, but this year (after an especially cold and long-lasting winter) it absolutely exploded into blossom and has been heavily laden with fruit (until today, when we picked them all). Apart from anything else, it was extremely beautiful, both when in flower and when laden with the bright red fruit. The fruit themselves were somewhat astringent to begin with (before they'd turned completely red), which may account for some reports of "middling" flavour. The ripe fruit have a very pleasant sweet/sour balance with just the slightest hint of an astringent aftertaste. While I wouldn't rate them at the same level as a good cherry, they are very tasty when eaten fresh from the tree. We've picked just under 4Kg (8lb) from that single, 1.8 metre (6ft) high tree and I happened upon this site when I was searching for information on how viable propagation from seeds is (seeing as we now have several hundred of them
).
I live in the New England area of Northern NSW, Australia. About 18 months ago my wife and I bought a house with a fabulous garden and this summer we noticed a bush up the back laden with red berries.. Eventually tracked down this website and it has allowed me to identify the bush as a Nanking Cherry. I contacted the old lady (91yo) from whom we bought the property. She had owned it for 50 years and was a very keen gardener. She had never seen fruit on it in the past but seemed to recall that it was some kind of cherry so that has confirmed the identification. My wife is in the kitchen as I write this post boiling up the approximately 1kg (2.2lbs)we retrieved from the bush an hour ago. It is mid summer here right now. We are at about 3000ft altitude, get cold winters by Australian standards and moderate rainfall 900mm (about 36 inches) per year. Another bush on the property that we will make jam (or something) from is a pineapple guave (feijoa).
Please forgive me for forgetting that I had written something here and made that offer.
Now that the cherries are being picked, I have seeds to send. Um, I don't know how to make that available to you. So you might suggest something to me.
And Anna, I never really concerned myself with the quality of the plant or species. I was just super-glad to have the plant around me. I find that they later you pick the berry, the more and better flavor there is. So I tell people that come briefly to help me pick them, that they need to pick only the darker red cherries, and that they should feel softer and plumper than the less ripe cherries. This year, I am finding that they north plants ripened first, then the west plants, and then the east plants (have noj plants to the south). The north plants had a better flavor and were bigger cherries, while that might be influenced by a variety of different reasons.
I now live in a unique microenvironment near a fair-sized river, where the temp of the river influences my growing seasons. My seasons for any flower or plant in the spring are at least two weeks behind the plants in my area. In the fall, I am two weeks or more later in freezing temps.
Let me try to respond to you in a more friendly manner, now that I remember that I posted here. Please forgive me.
We have some of these cherries that are also more sweet than tart. We love them when we can get them before the robins do. (in Wisconsin) They grow as shrub, not tree, and easily sprout from seeds, so we always have seedlings. We wouldn't mind sending some if you are still interested.