Cornelian cherry

Family

Cornaceae

Habit

Shrub

Height

5.5 m

Spread

5 m

Growth

medium

Lifespan

100 years

First yield

after 10 years

Productive years

150–200 years

Yield per plant

up to 40 kg a year

Yield in cultivation

up to 25 t/ha

Energy yield

1500 kcal per m² a year

Hardiness

zone 4–8

Shade tolerance

partial shade

Soil

Sand, Silt, Loam, Clay

Soil moisture

dry – very moist

pH

6.5 – 7.5

Planned in gardens

3×

Times apply to the northern hemisphere in a temperate climate and shift with altitude and cultivar.

Edible: Fruit is consumed fresh, dried, or preserved. It has a juicy texture with a pleasing acidic taste. When fully ripe, the fruit emits a plum-like scent and has a soft consistency, while unripe ones are more astringent. Due to its low pectin content, it is often mixed with other fruits for jam-making. In the past, the fruit was pickled in brine and served as a substitute for olives. Each fruit is of moderate size, reaching up to 15 mm, and contains a single large seed. The seeds yield a small amount of edible oil, and when roasted and ground, they can be used as a coffee alternative.

Medicinal: The fruit has been recorded as an astringent since antiquity: Dioscorides describes it in the first century, and the binding effect of its high tannin content runs through the old herbals as far as Hahnemann's pharmacist's lexicon of 1793. Hildegard of Bingen recommended baths of leaves and bark for rheumatic pain, and tea from dried leaves for coughs. Nutritionally documented is its high vitamin C content of 70 to 125 (–200) mg per 100 g together with a high proportion of anthocyanins; more recent work is directed at this antioxidant potential. The fruit is non-toxic — unlike cherry and plum, the stones contain no amygdalin, so they pose no hydrogen cyanide risk.

Other uses: Oil is obtained from the seeds of the plant. The bark is used as a dye, while the leaves contain tannins. The plant is known to yield a red dye, although the specific plant part for this extraction is unspecified. Its wood, valued by woodworkers, is dense and sinks in water. It is utilized in making tools, machine components, and various other items.

Site: Humus-rich, calcareous and not too dry, in sun to partial shade. Above all it needs room: at least three metres, old shrubs reach ten metres across, and the crown regularly grows wider than tall. Its distinguishing feature is when it flowers — from late February it is one of the very first food sources available and draws early-flying wild bees, bumblebee queens and hoverflies. In decidedly frosty positions that same trait reduces the crop, because the flowers freeze or no insects fly in the cold. At higher altitudes it grows well, but the fruit no longer ripens there. Care: Where rooting space is restricted the leaf margins scorch, so keep it evenly moist while the fruit develops in summer. Pruning is unnecessary given room; it tolerates thinning well and regenerates even after being cut to the stool. Young plants are at risk from browsing and need protection for the first few years. Disease is rare, occasionally leaf spot — then thin the plant and clear the autumn leaves. Harvest by shaking the fruit onto a net spread beneath.

Wild forms are easily raised from seed: the stones are cleaned of pulp immediately after harvest, washed and stratified. They lie over for one to two years and usually germinate only in the third spring — patience is the real requirement here. Seedlings flower after six to eight years; among the offspring of large-fruited cultivars a good number of large- and heavy-fruiting types reappear. Cultivars must be propagated vegetatively, usually by summer budding: such plants flower in the second year and bear from the fourth. Winter grafting also works. Layered branches root reliably, which makes layering a simple garden method — the same trait makes the species useful for stabilising banks.

As one of the first woody plants to flower each year — from late February into March depending on the weather — the cornelian cherry is a key forage source for early-flying insects. Three wild bee species are documented, among them Andrena tibialis and Andrena scotica, none of them specialists; honey bees, overwintered bumblebee queens and hoverflies join them. In cold springs the flowering can fall so early that hardly any insects are on the wing and fruit set suffers. It serves as a larval food plant for four moth and butterfly species, again without specialists. Around fifteen bird species eat the fruit, among them blackbird, hawfinch, blackcap and woodpigeon; dormouse and edible dormouse take it too. The dense branchwork carries nests and provides cover.

Special features: Pollinator, pruning, wind resistant, and soil erosion resistant; fertilization is much better with cross-pollinated seeds. Alternation is not possible with all varieties. The Lower Saxony State Agriculture and Water Board reports yields of up to 80 kg for some trees. Good for urban allotments and as food for native wildlife; seedlings can take 20 years to bear fruit for the first time.

Central and southern Europe to Asia Minor and the Caucasus. The natural range of the cornelian cherry extends from central and southern Europe across Asia Minor into Central Asia. The largest continuous wild stands are in the Caucasus region, which is also the centre of its diversity and the origin of most modern fruiting cultivars. In Austria the species is concentrated in eastern and southern Lower Austria, in the northern Burgenland and in the Upper Austrian pre-Alpine country south of Linz; the Pielach valley owes its nickname Dirndltal to these stands and still markets the fruit commercially. In terms of altitude it ranges from the lowlands into hill country.

The cornelian cherry is a shrub of half-open transitional ground: it grows in open mixed deciduous woodland, along summer-warm woodland edges, in scrub and hedgerows and on dry slopes. It is distinctly heat-loving and avoids dense shaded stands as well as waterlogged and compacted soils; it prefers humus-rich, calcareous and not overly dry sites in sun to partial shade. In fringe communities it forms dense stands together with privet, wayfaring tree, whitebeam, hawthorn and barberry, which as a boundary between woodland and open land carry a community of their own. It copes well with moderate summer drought, but where rooting space is restricted it responds quickly with scorched leaf margins.