To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] cherries
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:48:06 -0500
Earnest, The leaves on the own root Evans that Lucky sent me are smallish
and feel thicker than other cherry leaves. They have a shiny surface that
almost reminds me of smooth flexible plastic. My fingers sort of stick when
I slide them along the leaf surface. By contrast, mazzard has a much larger
longer leaf, thin, dry and leaf-like in feel. Also sweet cherries typically
have 9-11 pairs of veins per leaf, sour cherries 7-9. All of this is a moot
point if your trees were on the typical Maheleb rootstock. Seems like sour
cherries are supposed to do ok on it but sweet cherries are definitely
shorter lived. I spent years trying to ID various trees in town, so I have
this stuff memorized.
Definitely earth up your trees if you want to put the Evans on it's own
roots. Might not want to do it all at once. Also you might want to do
something sneaky like find a peice of root and graft directly onto the root
and plant that with the graft underground. Or if you can get some pits,
grow them and graft or summer bud onto the seedlings. Surely someone could
spare him your Evans pits? The two trees I got from Lucky have done no
better here in the heat than they have for him. but at least I have had the
chance to see how very different a Morello cherry leaf is from an amarelle.
Still haven't encountered a maheleb that I know of. The nursery practice
of putting sweet cherries onto maheleb is the reason sweet cherries are said
to be picky about soil and are short lived. Mine on their own roots have
done very well on heavy clay, but alas they get frosted where they are.
They are clones of a tree that crops annually in a better spot some 15 miles
away. Hope this info helps. You deserve to be able to grow SOME kind of
fruit up there. Donna