The dazzling white flowers of Cherry Plum are the earliest each year, heralding a spring still weeks away. Sometimes called Myrobalan Plum, it is often wrongly assumed to bear mirabelle plums, which are actually produced by its relative Mirabelle (Prunus × syriaca). It grows 'wild' in hedgerows, roadsides and woodland edges.
Native to south-east Europe and eastwards across Central Asia and the Himalaya. Widely naturalised and cultivated across north-western Europe including Britain and Ireland where it is considered a neophyte. Abundant across southern England, less frequent in Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
Monoecious, producing single hermaphrodite flowers that are insect-pollinated. Fruits contain a single seed, distributed by birds and mammals. Rarely suckering. Cherry Plum is one of the evolutionary parents of Domestic Plum (p. xxx).
Small (12-15m), the tallest of the plums, with a broad domed top when not hedge-flailed. Bark dark grey-brown, maturing with wide shallow fissures. Twigs soon glabrous, thin, green and mostly thornless, with small alternate buds. Leaves oval to ovate (widest near the base), 3-6cm, fresh green, glabrous except downy underside veins, serrate. Flowers bright white, mostly single, often crowded on short spurs. Fruit a sweet globular plum (25mm), red or gold, ripening late summer. Blackthorn differs: viciously spiny dark twigs, later cream flowers, small bitter black fruit.
Cherry Plum needs no help thriving in the countryside and is rarely planted in hedgerows; it is more usually grown as a cultivar in small gardens and parks. It tolerates a wide range of well-drained soils and partial shade, but flowers best in sun. 'Pissardii' has an upright leggy form with red-purple leaves; 'Nigra' (8m) is very popular, with red-purple leaves and deep pink flowers; 'Hessei' is a dwarf (2m). The species is often used as rootstock for Domestic Plum.
Being such an early flowering tree, its nectar and pollen sustains insects when there are few other food sources available, especially bees emerging on warm days in late winter or early spring.
Generally healthy.
Cultivars are planted for ornament, though most also produce fruit. Its cherry-like fruits make delicious tarts and specialist preserves. Hedgerows with this species are an unmissable visual delight in early spring.
