CHERRY 
Wild HIS sketch of wild Cherry recalls a long list of lovely blossom- 
Cherry ing trees belonging to the Cerasus division of the Prunus 
genus. The picture unfortunately is of the least important 
of the whole group—the common wild Cherry of our Kentish 
woods, as wonderful in the autumn for the glorious tones of red 
and yellow in its fading leaves, as for the wealth of white blossom 
in the spring. Some of the double varieties are considered more 
beautiful—in beauty of individual flower and spray they 
certainly excel, but as trees they never seem to possess the 
height or the graceful lightness of the single types, whose 
early flowering season gives them another plea for inclusion in 
our gardens. 
We live in a county of Cherry orchards, where acres of 
white blossom adorn the hillside; but the wild always beats 
the cultivated in point of time, and so attracts the first rapturous 
admiration of the year. Wonderful as these orchards are with 
their smooth turf and browsing sheep and lambs, and overhead 
the maze of white blossoms on the strong dark branches, they have 
their drawback at a later season of the year, when, from four 
in the morning till the sun has set, guns must be kept going 
to scare away the birds. It is of little use planting Cherry 
trees, in hope of enjoying fruit as well as flower, where 
thrushes and blackbirds abound, or the still greedier rooks and 
pigeons, as a whole tree will be cleared long before the fruit 
is ripe. 
Cerasus pendula rosea is almost as early as the wild 
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