Nanking cherry

Family

Rosaceae

Habit

Shrub

Height

1.8 m

Spread

2.5 m

Growth

fast

Lifespan

25 years

First yield

after 3 years

Full yield

after 4 years

Productive years

15 years

Yield per plant

up to 7 kg a year

Yield in cultivation

up to 24 t/ha

Energy yield

1500 kcal per m² a year

Hardiness

zone 3–8

Shade tolerance

partial shade

Soil

Sand, Silt, Loam

Soil moisture

semi-dry – very moist

pH

5 – 7.5

Synonyms

Filzkirsche, Sandkirsche

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

Edible: Fruit - can be eaten raw or cooked, being juicy with a slightly sweet to sour taste. Unripe fruits can be pickled. The fruit has a diameter of about 12 mm and holds a large seed that can be consumed raw or cooked, but should be avoided if too bitter. The buds are cooked and eaten, whether they are flower or leaf buds is uncertain.

Medicinal: Although no specific mention was found for this type, all members of the genus contain substances that break down into hydrogen cyanide (cyanide or prussic acid) in water. In small amounts, this highly toxic compound stimulates respiration, improves digestion, and provides a sense of well-being.

Other uses: A green dye can be obtained from the leaves and a dark grey to green one from the fruit. The fruits contain around 0.7 per cent fruit acids, up to twelve per cent sugar and about 30 milligrams of vitamins per 100 grams. They ripen from late June into July, sit stalkless and densely on the two-year-old shoots inside the shrub, and are bright scarlet, freestone and up to 3.5 grams; Russian selections reach 1.8 centimetres and 3.6 grams. In full bearing a shrub of those cultivars yields five to seven, exceptionally ten kilograms. The fruit does not keep and must be processed at once. Besides eating fresh it gives juice, jam, preserve, compote, cake toppings, liqueur and wine.

Site: Full sun and a free-draining, humus-rich soil, sandy-loamy to somewhat heavier; moderate soil moisture is ideal, drought is tolerated well, waterlogging is not. A sheltered spot is unnecessary — the species is hardy to about minus thirty-four degrees and thrives in rough districts. Because it flowers abundantly but does not always fruit as freely, plant several shrubs together for a good set. The flowers are self-fertile, yet cross-pollination raises the yield markedly; besides other Nanking cherries, Prunus virginiana, P. pensylvanica and P. besseyi serve as partners. Care: It flowers and fruits as a three- to four-year-old seedling but is short-lived, lasting ten to fifteen years. Pruning is not essential, though a hard rejuvenation cut every few years prevents premature ageing. Cutting the two-year-old shoots back to five or ten buds straight after flowering forfeits that season's crop on them but produces long one-year canes that flower freely the year after. In wet, rainy summers twig blight (Monilia) appears; cut back into healthy wood and the shrubs reliably break again. Hares and mice leave the species alone.

Unlike the grafted fruiting Prunus species, the Nanking cherry is easily raised from seed — it stands close to the wild form and seedlings come out serviceable. The stones are taken from the ripe fruit, washed and cold-stratified over winter, then sown in an outdoor bed; the plants flower and fruit in their third or fourth year. Heavy-bearing selections and named cultivars are instead passed on by softwood cuttings taken from vigorously growing shoots in early summer. Older shrubs produce a few root suckers that can be separated off. Conversely the species itself serves as a dwarfing rootstock for other cherries — a way of keeping sweet and sour cherries smaller.

The Nanking cherry flowers very early, usually before the leaves emerge from April onwards, supplying nectar and pollen at a time when little else is in bloom — which makes it valuable for wild bees and bumblebees. The flowers are openly built and accessible to insects of every tongue length. Insect pollination is decisive for a good fruit set even though the flowers are self-fertile. The small, bright red fruits are highly popular with birds and are usually stripped before anyone else gets to them; netting is easier here than on a full-sized cherry tree. As a larval food plant for native butterflies and moths this East Asian species plays almost no part. Hares and mice do not touch it.

Features: easy to care for; produces some root shoots; 'Orient' variety is self-fertile; can also be pollinated by P. pumila & P. virginiana, which are also interesting small cherry shrubs; Fruit 3.5g → Full yield = 2000 fruits; popular with birds, requiring better protection than the large cherry tree.

East Asia: northern China, Korea and the Himalaya. The Nanking cherry comes from northern and western China including Tibet, from Mongolia, Korea and Japan, and reaches south into the Himalaya; records for northern India are not secure. Both of its common names point to that origin: Korean cherry and Nanking cherry, after the eastern Chinese city. It has been in cultivation in Europe since 1870, and the Arnold Arboretum brought it to the United States in 1892. Here it is grown as an ornamental and picking shrub rather than a commercial fruit; Russia, by contrast, developed its own breeding line with eighteen described cultivars, none of them so far available in western Europe. The species does not escape in Central Europe.

In its native range the Nanking cherry grows in open woodland, on mountain slopes and along forest edges in the continental mountain regions of East Asia. Those sites are marked by hard, dry winters and warm summers, which explains its exceptional frost hardiness: it survives around minus thirty-four degrees Celsius and ranks among the most cold-tolerant fruit species of all. It demands full sun; in shade it barely flowers or fruits. It is adaptable as to soil, preferring somewhat heavier to sandy-loamy, humus-rich ground with moderate moisture, and tolerates drought well. Waterlogging and heavy, compacted sites do not suit it.