The cherry, although it may be dismissed now, has, in fact, a long and noble history stretching back to the Romans. The Latin name for the sweet cherry is prunus avium, meaning plum and bird, possibly due to birds’ notorious love of cherries, as any cherry-grower will tell you. The Latin for the acid cherry, prunus cerasus, evolved into the French cerise, and from there into the English cherry. There are more than 1000 varieties of cherry worldwide – about 900 sweet and 300 acid.
Cultivated cherries were introduced to Britain in the 1st century AD from Persia by the Romans. The popularity of cherries even then caused Pliny to comment that ‘in less than 120 years, other lands had cherries, even as far as Britain’. In fact, legend has it that you can trace the route of old Roman roads in Britain by looking out for wild cherry trees - the Roman legions spat out stones from the fruit as they marched around the country. Look in May, when the white cherry blossom is visible for miles.
The south and west of England – Kent, Hereford and Worcester, Buckinghamshire, Essex and Oxfordshire – became famed for their glorious cherry orchards, the trees reaching dizzying heights of 60 feet or more and covering tens of thousands of acres across the counties. There were even orchards as far north as Lincolnshire, though not a tree remains now. Henry VIII planted the first cherry trees in Sittingbourne and eben now Sittingbourne has a cherry tree on their council crest.
The traditional orchards were planted on grassland, flower- and herb-rich for the sheep that grazed the orchards, keeping the grass low and providing a constant supply of manure for the trees. Cherry trees had to be planted 27-33 feet apart, because of their sheer height, and so they were often inter-planted with hops or fruit bushes to make the most of the space.
These old trees were so large that during the ripening season, they sometimes needed 30 or 40 stay ladders – as they were known – per tree for the women to climb, picking the cherries by their stalks with fine scissors to avoid damaging the fruit and filling their sieves, often strapped to their waists, with up to 48lb of fruit at a time. They could sell them for 9d to 1s 3d per sieve.
In addition to their contribution to our cultural heritage and landscape, the fruit orchards play an important role for wildlife. Orchard blossom and fruit also provide an important source of nectar and food for birds, butterflies, insects and beetles such as the noble chafer – one of the rarest and completely dependent on old decaying fruit trees for its habitat.
