MONGOLIAN CHERRY
(Prunus fruticosa)
 

A tree of Mongolian cherry

Family: Rosaceae

Synonyms: Prunus cerasus var. pumila, Prunus chamaecerasus

Other names: Dwarf cherry, ground cherry, steppe cherry.

Mongolian cherry is native to Ciscaucasia or western Siberia.  It is a one of the most winter hardy plants.  It is aldo xerophtic in nature.  This fruit has, however, spread with time to several European countries.
 

Three fruits of Mongolian cherry
 

Description:

A spreading bush, 60 – 120 cm high with slender glabrous branchletsbark dark brown with lenticels.

Leaves varying from obo-vate to oblanceolate and lanceolate, 12 mm by 6 mm, apex acuminate or sometimes almost obtuse, closely serrulate, thickish, shining above, the petiole short.

Flowering shoots of a Mongolian cherry tree
 

Flowers white, in nearly or quite sessile umbels, hermaphrodite

Mongolian cherry flowers
 

               Fruit small, globular, purple-red, very sour.

            Fruit light to dark red, globose to pyriform, about 8-25 mm in diameter, ripening in August. The taste is sour-sweet, or tart.

Utilization:

As a sour tasting cherry, the fruit is used in cooking, and for jams and jellies.

Cultivation:

The roots of the shrub stabilize soil. It is planted in hedgerows as an ornamental windscreen

The plant requires full sun; that is, it is a steppe rather than a forest plant, although it does form thickets at the edges of open forest.

Multiplication is mostly by seed.  But at times it is also grafted on Prunus avium to get a round plant.