Cherries
About Cherries
Cherries are categorized as a stone fruit, or fruits that have a pit. The pit is a hard "stonelike" shell around the seed. Most cherry trees are cloned by taking a cutting from a mature cherry tree and then allowing the cutting to either produce roots in a growing medium or grafting the cutting onto another tree or root stock.
There are two main categories of cherries: tart and sweet. Cherry trees are one of the first tree fruits to bud in spring and one of the first tree fruits to be harvested; June into August. The honeybee is the primary pollinator of cherry trees. Each bud that is pollinated will grow and become the cherry fruit. Late frosts can affect the harvest as they damage the young buds causing wilt or poorly formed or developed fruit. Most cherries are still picked by hand, yet more and more producers are investing in technology to help with harvests such as mechanized tractor pickers.
Cloning
The cherry blossoms that are pollinated in the spring will eventually become the cherry fruit which is harvested in early summer into mid-summer. If a cherry tree is grown from a seed and not cloned, the new tree will produce fruit which is different than its parent tree due to the mixing of tree genes during the spring pollination period. The process of using genetically dense tissue from an organism, branches and buds, to make a copy of that organism is called cloning. To ensure that trees produce the type of cherry desired by the orchardists, person who supervises or owns and orchard, can use two different processes: grafting and rooting.
In branch grafting, an orchardist cuts branches from one tree and attaches it to another tree or tree roots. First, a desired branch from a cherry tree which is to be cloned is located and cut off with an angular cut. Next, a matching angular cut is made on a branch or trunk of a host tree. Finally, the two cut ends are placed together and wrapped with a special kind of parafilm tape until they heal together.
Another method of grafting with branches is to coppice a growing tree or cut off a top portion of the trunk or branch. Slits are then made between the wood and bark and cuttings from another tree are cut at an angle and inserted. The area is then wrapped with parafilm tape until it heals. With both grafting techniques, the apple variety from the desired tree will be produced on the host tree from the point where the cut branch was attached to the host tree.
The second type of grafting is called bud grafting. Bud grafting is when a bud is removed from a desired cherry tree and attached to a host tree. The first step of bud grafting is to cut the developing bud from a desired tree. An X pattern is cut into the bark of the root stock or host tree which will receive the bud graft. The bud is inserted under the bark of the tree and wrapped with parafilm tape.
In both grafting methods, over time the cut ends heal, and the cutting and host tree grows as one plant.
When rooting, a "cutting" or piece of a cherry tree branch, a branch of a desired tree is selected and cut off. After being cut, one end of the branch is dipped in a root hormone. Root hormone promotes root growth on the section of the cutting where it is applied. The scion is then put in a growing medium or moist soil and eventually producing roots. After growing roots, the branch is considered a tree and, with proper care, will grow into a mature clone of the cherry tree it was taken from.
Fun Facts
- Cherries are considered a "super fruit" especially the tart varieties. Superfruits are high in antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and fiber.
- New York ranks fifth in the nation for tart cherry production.
- A Syracuse University professor used grafting to create a tree that produces over forty different kinds of stone fruits with different kinds of cherries being one of those forty fruits.