North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["kieran or donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>]

Sorry, a typo, the Duke blooms LATER than the sweets.  Hence the notion of
seeing if sour cherries will pollinate it better.
    Actually, now that I think of it, it seems a little odd to me that the
Steve's Evans came through such a late freeze.   Around here people only
seem to have amarelle cherries, either Montmorency or more ofter a sprout
from Granny's tree.  The only tree I was absolutely sure was Montmorency was
one one a nursery property, I was really impressed by the larger fruit, but
then the tree died.  Granny's tree won't sicken and die, even if you do have
to pit twice as many for the same amount of fruit.  The only morello I have
have seen was a nice young tree, bound to be a North Star, probably about 8
years old.  The year after I checked out the fruit on it, we had a bad late
freeze, and that tree froze so badly, I don't know if it even survived.  It
certainly had to have been set back for the year by it anyway.  I have never
seen the amarelles hurt by freezes, and they tend to crop most years.  These
observations all come from my 3 years of living in the old part of town and
getting around by bike a lot.  Since then, so many of the trees I used to
keep watch on have died from SBD, Sudden Bulldozer Disease.
    One of the sweet cherries I have are a sweet black cherry that has long
been grown here and is typically propagated by sprouts.  I sorta wonder if
it too has some sour cherry in it.  Do sweet cherries on their own roots
typically send up root sprouts like plums do?  Not nearly as much as plums,
but enough to give trees away.  The others are seedlings from a sweet cherry
that cropped one year in town and died the next year from sudden chainsaw
disease.  I don't actually have any of the yellow cherry seedlings that I
brought to a NAFEX meeting years ago and gave away.  I took in this pot
jammed full of seedlings and left it with a note on it saying they were
freebies.  when I came back, there was only a bit of dirt left in the pot.
(This kind of thing is so much fun!)  I need to hit that yard and at least
pick up some pits, since the season is past.  The history on the sweet
yellow cherry is that the family's mother bought some cherries from a guy a
few miles from here, and liked them so well she planted seeds.  When I
picked from them, they told me that the 4 trees had not failed to crop in 35
years.  (Incidentally, these trees are on a slope.  I found a huge cherry
tree on flat ground once, but it was dead.  Not that I think the flat ground
was what killed it!)  Of course, the fruit is quite small, typical for what
I have seen of sweet cherries in TN.
    My first criteria for fruit trees in TN is that they not be dead.  Only
after that do I ask about fruit size or quality.  In the case of sweet
cherries, I talked to a retired TTU prof who was very surprised that I was
finding live sweet cherries here.  He said than many years ago many people
not only had sweet cherries, but they also grew in the fencerows.  then some
disease came in and they all died.  Anyone know what that disease was?
Could it have something to do with the drought in the 30's, which killed all
the Blackheart cherries?  NAFEX's eastern sweet cherry expert, (is he still
living?) told me that it didn't rain normally in the eastern US for 12
years, and that afterward people were looking for the Blackheart, but no one
could find one alive.  As you probably know, the true Blackheart was
supposedly discovered a few years ago and is now commercially available.
(I'd guess it turned up in some hollow in the Smokies where they'd pick up
better rainfall and maybe have a bit less evaporation.  Does anyone know
where the surviving tree was located?)  He told me that the way you could
tell is that if you chewed up some of the cherries and spit, it looked as
dark as tobacco juice.    Donna