WILD CHERRIES. 
95 
occasionally in hedgerows, this sub-species is not indigenous in 
any part of our islands. Hooker says the only country in 
which it is really indigenous is Western Asia ; but its numerous 
cultivated forms are widely distributed. 
It should be noted that the fruits of the Blackthorn and its 
sub-species are formed within the flower ; so are those of the 
Cherries, to be next described, the ovary being botanically 
termed “superior,” that is, above the base of the calyx and 
coi'olla, when the flower is in an erect position. This is a point of 
some importance when one seeks to understand the different 
formation of the fruit in so closely related a species as the Apple, 
in which the ovary is “ inferior,” or below the flower. 
Wild Cherries {Prnmis avium). 
Nature has been comparatively lavish in the matter of 
Cherries, for she has bestowed three species upon the British 
Islands. For the cultivated Cherry it is said that we ought 
to thank the Romans, as for many other good things in the 
way of food. Pliny states that we had the Cherry in Britain by 
the middle of the first century a.d. Evelyn tells us that the 
Cherry orchards of Kent owe their origin to “ the plain industry 
of one Richard Haines, a printer to Henry VIII.,” by whom 
“ the fields and environs of about thirty towns, in Kent only, 
were planted with fruit trees from Flanders, to the unusual 
benefit and general improvement of the county to this day.” 
It is probable, however, that our own countrymen had already 
effected some improvement on the wild sorts by cultivation, 
for even in the woods some trees are found bearing fruit much 
larger and of better flavour than usual, and such would be 
selected for cultivation. 
Our three natives are the Wild or Dwarf Cherry {Pru?Jt<s 
cerasus),xht. Gean {P. avium), and the Bird Cherry {P. padus). 
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