English Cherry

Cerasus sativa multifera - English Cherry

"One of the most beautiful and best species," wrote Poiteau in 1846, with a hint of astonishment at the rarity of this exceptional cherry tree.

The English Cherry combines everything one could expect from an elite fruit: beautiful habit, abundant flowering, remarkable taste quality. Its only flaw? Too short a season. All English cherries disappear in early July, when common varieties still persist for another month. This early ripening perhaps explains why it never supplanted the Montmorency varieties "which grate the teeth and tear the throat," in the botanist's uncompromising words.

This cherry tree is distinguished first and foremost by its elegance: of medium size, with a regular and harmonious habit, it displays straight, sparsely branched, almost vertical branches.

Its inverted oval leaves, dark green above and pale below, measure three to four inches. In spring, it is covered in a profusion of white flowers, thirteen lines in diameter, borne on long peduncles.

The resulting fruit is strikingly beautiful: eleven lines high, a luminous crimson red turning brownish-red at full maturity. Its blood-red flesh yields a sweet, pleasant water, entirely devoid of acidity, a rare quality that makes it a fruit of choice. The cherry ripens at the end of June, borne on a long, elegant stem.

This plate is taken from Pierre-Antoine Poiteau and Pierre Jean François Turpin's Traité des Arbres Fruitiers, a botanical encyclopedia published between 1807 and 1835, a major reference in 19th-century naturalist illustration. It combines the rigor of scientific drawing with a rare artistic sensibility, characteristic of the great plates of the golden age of illustrated botany.