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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] need help with cherry ID

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  • From: "Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>
  • To: NAFEX <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] need help with cherry ID
  • Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 15:54:59 -0700

Title: Re: [NAFEX] need help with cherry ID
I first tasted Jan and Joy at Professor Meader's place and I'd have thought they were regular pie cherries.  Of course it depends on what you like to eat, whether or not you would eat them fresh or not, but I found them easy enough to eat fresh.
   My experience with Prunus tomentosa isn't unique in the Willamette Valley.  Oregon State U. trialed them many years ago and had essentially the same results.  Spring here is long, cool, though not usually freezing, with lots of rain.  We can have more than two months of cool, wet weather after the last frost date, and it's not unusual for it to last longer than that.  Other crops besides P. tomentosa have regular disease problems here because of that long, cold spring.   P. besseyi has the same results as P. tomentosa, for example.  Anthracnose on apples and pears can be a mess.  American plums like Toka, Superior, Waneta, etc. are short lived and rarely set  any fruit.  They also get dieback much like P. tomentosa and P. besseyi.    Japanese plums do fine, though, and European plums are fine, too.
-Lon Rombough



I have never tasted them, but have heard -- right from Dr. Meader, I think -- that they are not cherries that you would eat out of hand. Nanking cherry, on the other hand, is very tasty right off the bush. I'd be curious about the experiences of others, in addition to Lon, in the Pacific Northwest with Nanking cherries. Perhaps Lon's poor luck with them is due to factors specific to his site and not general in the Northwest.



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