52 FAMILIAR TREES 
with us it is somewhat more susceptible to the 
action of frost than its congener the Portugal 
Laurel (Prunus lusitanica). Its long racemes of 
small white flowers are produced after the young 
leaves, during April or May; and the fruit, which is 
green at first, ripens to a pure black by October. 
This fruit, though insipid, is perfectly harmless. 
The Cherry Laurel is wild in sub-alpine woods in 
Persia, the Caucasus, and the Crimea, and was first 
introduced into Europe by Clusius in 1576. He 
received it from David Ungnad, who was at that 
time ambassador of the Emperor at Constantinople, 
and it is related that all the plants sent home by 
Ungnad to Vienna perished with the exception of 
one Horse-chestnut and one Laurel, the latter 
tree being then known as Tra‘bison curma’si, the 
Trebizonde Date or Plum.  Clusius’s plant died 
without flowering; but a cutting from it flowered 
in 1583. The earliest mention of the plant in 
England is in “ Paradisi in sole Paradisus Terrestris ; 
or, a Garden of all Sorts of Pleasant Flowers, which 
our English Ayre will admitt to be noursed up: 
By John Parkinson, Apothecary of London” (1629). 
It is as follows :— 
“Laurocerasus. The Bay Cherry. This beautiful Bay, in his 
naturall place of growing, groweth to be a tree of a reasonable 
bignesse and height, and oftentimes with us also, if it be pruned 
from the lower branches ; but more usually in these colder countries 
it groweth asa shrub or hedge bush, shooting forth many branches, 
whereof the greater and lower are covered with a dark grayish 
green barke, but the young ones are very green, whereon are set 
many goodly, fair, large, thick and long leaves, a little dented 
about the edges, of a more excellent, fresh shining green colour, and 
far larger than any Bay leaf, and compared by many to the leaves of 
