With a short harvest season, cherries are a rare and sought-after fruit. Photo courtesy of Cherry Marketing Institute.

February 2007
Updated February 2009

Product Reviews / Main Nibbles / Fruits

Cherish The Cherry

The Background Of A Favorite Fruit

Page 1: Cherry Facts

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Introduction

Life is just a bowl of cherries...the cherry on the cake. Cherries—sweet, rare, and seasonally limited—have been a prized item since before recorded time. Like so many delectables, they’ve entered our common language in an important way: beautiful and delicious, they’ve become synonymous with the best of the best. If you don’t believe me, feel free to ask anyone who ever bought a car off the lot in cherry condition...only to find out that it was secretly a lemon.

Cherry Facts

In the United States, there are more than 1,000 different varieties of cherry tree, almost all of them blossoming over a three-week period in late May and early June. Of those 1,000, only about ten varieties are produced commercially, but they’re put to good use: every tree produces about 7,000 cherries or, if you prefer to think about it in real terms, about thirty pies’ worth. The American crop of more than 300 million pounds of cherries—of which almost 75% come from Michigan—has no shortage of health benefits. Like most fruit, they are fat-, sodium-, and cholesterol-free, and they are also a particularly good source of Vitamin C and potassium. Rich in bioflavonoids and other antioxidants*, raw fresh cherries maintain many of their antioxidant qualities if frozen immediately after harvest. Luckily, freezing not only preserves but also concentrates and improves the taste. *Read more about antioxidants and of the health benefits of sour red cherries.

Each cherry tree produces about 30 pies’ worth of fruit each year. Photo courtesy of the Cherry Marketing Institute.

• Two Main Species Of Cherry. The two main species of cherry throughout the world are the Prunus avium, or sweet cherry (also called wild cherry), and the Prunus cerasus, or sour cherry (also called tart cherry). Growing on tall trees that range between fifteen and thirty meters tall, both varieties occur broadly across Europe and Asia, and there is no cross-pollination between the two. The wild cherry—also known as the sweet cherry—is largely cultivated across California, Oregon, and Washington State, and popular varieties include the Bing (named for a Washington state horticultural foreman) and their genetic offspring, the Rainier cherry. The Rainier is famous for its creamy yellow flesh and its high price tag, as most of the yearly crop is picked off by birds before it ever has a chance to reach your table.
  Photo of sweet Bing cherries by Chris Chidsey | SXC.
• The Royal Ann Cherry & Maraschino Cherry. Another well-known sweet cherry is the Royal Ann, which is better known in its preserved, dyed and sweetened form as the maraschino cherry, used to garnish cocktails and desserts. However, this is a “faux” maraschino, and originally the FDA required that it be called “imitation” maraschino. However, after Prohibition, the FDA revised its standard of identity to define “maraschino cherries” as “cherries which have been dyed red, impregnated with sugar and packed in a sugar sirup flavored with oil of bitter almonds or a similar flavor.” The real, original maraschino cherry is made from the Marasca cherry (Prunus cerasus var. marasca), a type of sour Morello cherry that grows largely in Bosnia, Croatia, Herzegovina, northern Italy and Slovenia (although the tree is likely to have originated in Central Asia). With a bitter taste and a drier pulp than other cherries, it is ideal to make cherry (maraschino) liqueur, in which the maraschino cherries were originally preserved as a delicacy for royalty and the wealthy. Since the Marasca cherry is very particular about where it can be grown, other sweet cherries must be used to meet the world demand for “maraschino” cherries.
  Photo of Black Forest Cake by Asif Akbar | SXC.
• Sour Cherries. Sour cherries are popular for use in pies and general snacking by people who prefer a more tart taste (the fruit is actually more fragile than sweet cherries, and harder to come by). The most popular breed is the Montmorency, which accounts for more than 95% of the sour cherry market, followed distantly by the Morello and Early Richmond varieties. The tartness gives the fruit more complexity and an acid backbone for cooking: It is the Montmorency, shown in the photo at right, that is most likely to show up in your Thanksgiving pie or in Cherries Jubilee. Sour cherries’ origins strongly point to origins around the Black and Caspian seas.
• Antioxidants. Darker cherries have higher antioxidant and vitamin levels than lighter ones, but sour cherries, which are generally bright red rather than a darker red-purple in color, have far higher levels than sweet.

In addition to their wonderful fruit, the cherry tree itself is known for its beautiful flowers. In particular, Asian varieties such as the Japanese sakura (known colloquially as the cherry blossom and featured extravagantly in Washington, D.C.’s eponymous festival, are well-regarded for their long, weeping branches filled with small pink flowers. The more floral trees often produce tiny berries unsuitable for consumption; for this reason, many cultivars replace the tree’s natural stamens and pistils with additional petals to create a more beautiful—albeit sterile—tree.
Photo by Craig Jewell | SXC.

Continue To Page 2: Cherry History

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