North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Rodney Eveland <Reveland@WYOMING.com>]

"Evans Cherry"

The "Evans Cherry" for which the protocol for propagation was developed
by Kris Pruski at Crop Diversification Centre North is now the number
one selling fruit tree in Canada. Somewhere in the region of 50 to 100
thousand were sold last year (both in Canada and the US). 

The name was a "label" put onto the cherry by Kris from scion material
that Dr. Ieuan Evans from the Agronomy Unit gave him of this fruit tree.
This cherry can be traced back to 1923 to a Mrs. Bogward who lived less
than a mile from CDCN. By 1977 Mrs. Bogward had a well kept apple,
plum and cherry orchard on around an acre of land. Several of the cherry
trees were large, with trucks (30 cm) or more in diameter. In 1979 her
homestead and orchard had to be abandoned since the federal government
had expropriated the adjacent land for a prison site. In a visit to the
orchard in 1995, fully sixteen years after receiving any care or
attention , several of the cherry trees were alive and still producing
cherry crops. The strange fact about the Evans cherry is that despite
its apparent long history in north-east Edmonton none of the avid
amateur fruit growers, commercial nurseries, or provincial, federal or
university personnel involved in fruit growing were aware of this superb
cherry. No one really believed Dr. Evans - how could a productive sour
cherry be prairie hardy in Canada? Other than being an English Morello
type sour cherry the genetics of this tree are a mystery. Its seed,
readily germinated, is not particularly hardy or productive while the
budwood grafts readily to pin cherries - three year old grafts produce
good cherry crops. 

The sour cherries qualities for eating are excellent as are its
qualities for preserving , jams, jellies, piesand wine making. 

In 1996 and 1997 there were an estimated 30 thousand Evans cherry trees
produced each year in Alberta, all with sold out signs. To date there
are six or more cherry orchards in place in Alberta and Saskatchewan
with one hundred and up to 3 thousand trees on a single site
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I lost the URL for this info that I copied into wordpad several years
ago. Once again this info came from our friends up North where they have
an "Aurora watch" posted daily......... ;-)