All plants have an extremely large potential for change far greater than our imagination of what we think is possible. Modern plant breeding goals are almost always incredibly tiny and parceled out in super small characteristic level based doses. There is never going from point A to point B and wrapping it up. There is so many points in between. It will last an eternity as nature changes course. Yet once in while there is a straight effortless course to point B. This is one of those stories where discovery was more than the plant itself.
When I began to grow plants from seed I knew there was going to be variation. That was what I wanted while at the same time I wanted to know what was called average. I wanted to find out what was the middle of the population and how that middle could be harnessed in some way. I wanted to preserve and enhance the middle road. I didn’t really want to find the great outliers or selections that were radically different than their close family. My point A to point B was the whole middle and not a single individual plant. You could then take this middle area and reproduce it while always expanding crop diversity. For some reason, I found plant breeding kind of wasteful and redundant in many ways. I understood its value, but the means to obtain the result was clouded in mystery to me. It seemed like an odd way to do things.
One of the first flowering cherries I became aware of was the Kwanzan Cherry. It is hard to miss. Like pink snowballs in the sky, Kwanzan delivers a flower display like no other plant. It was widely available and found in the nursery trade like gang busters. The dense petals and structure of the flowers made it impossible for it to fruit. It was the standard ornamental cherry and there was not much else. The Tidal Basin cherries in Washington, D.C. were a totally different species and hybrid complex of which were not hardy enough to survive in Michigan. There was the standard well known weeping cherry and this was often put on a standard rootstock of sweet cherry. Even today you see these in many locations throughout Michigan. When portions of the tree throw their graft or top, the sweet cherry becomes part or whole of the tree leaving behind the weeper soon overwhelming it in the process. When the patented variety, ‘Snow Fountain’ came to cherry town it was originally rooted. You would have to stake it upright otherwise it would skip along the ground. If a borer got into it, you would prune it back and then zip tie up a sprout from the base to start over again. This ushered in a new type of cherry that was easily reproducible this way. It also became available on the same rootstock as Kwanzan and the other Weeping Cherries. But here was a radical difference; the flowers on ‘Snow Fountain’ are open and have pollen. To my surprise, it produced fruit. It was not a lot of fruit but enough to experiment with. I was kind of excited to see that. I would put the fruit in my mouth and slowly eat the fruit off the seeds. The fruit was very astringent with an old expired dated cough medicine cherry like flavor that made you wish it the whole experience would end as soon as it started. I would then let the pits dry a little before cold stratifying them in my refrigerator at home in a slightly damp napkin. The one constant was the large number of bumblebees I would see every spring covering the blossoms. Being in an urban environment, I was surprised at this. I was wondering if it would cross with other cherries in the neighborhood too. It was a mystery to me and rather exciting to see what would happen when I raised these seedlings. My urban tree in front of our first home was a favorite flowering tree and I had my daughters and our dog pose in front of it. This is the self rooted form that I purchased and trained upwards but kept lower than the window so we could look out of our living room. When we sold the home, the new owner did not like the tree and took it out. Yet other trees still remain in the landscape to this day some 40 plus years ago including the Hinoki cypress on the other front window. You never know what will last in the urban landscape.
As time went on and I began to produce more seedlings, I began to see a trend. It was the “Weeping and Leaning Trend”. It took roughly a hundred or so seedlings and then planting out a few of the most vigorous plants but soon I too had the weeping cherry in bulk. That characteristic was dominant and came through in large numbers. I decided to make plant out the seedlings that were slightly different. Many of the weeping plants were weak and could not grow straight enough to even get off the ground. Some were serpentine cherries and some were quasi-weeping cherries. The variation led to me to follow the most vigorous trees that were quasi-weeping. I had to forgo the cascading effect of the weepers to some extent. The other aspect of this selection process not often considered is the love of the foliage of this tree by Japanese beetles and rose chafers. I had to find trees resistant and strong enough to overcome defoliation if it did happen. I could not plant rows and rows of cherries. I planted ten here and ten over there and five there. It was not a massive breeding project. Even if I had illusions grandeur, the nursery industry is fickle in its plant selections especially as it relates to trees. Prunus is on the list of so-so plants. People like cherries and they are a popular plant. But they tend to be put in the camp of defoliated trees by mid-summer and not attractive long term. For this reason no one is likely to promote your cherry. Perennials you can spew out and hope. Trees you can dribble out and pray. It’s a crowded market.
Snow Mountain is a seedling selection found outside of its population of weeping seedlings. It’s straight growth habit makes it a possible candidate as a street tree as an ornamental tree. It produces very little fruit.
I did discover one tree quite different outside of this weeping population. It was the outlier and like no other cherry in that population. When I first saw it in my polyhouses I was shocked. Here was a seedling with distinctive large green leaves three times in size than Snow Fountain, rich in pigment and far darker than its siblings. To me it looked like a sweet cherry. Thank you bumblebees! They had done their magic. I put this and ten other of its siblings in this area on the top of a hill near my English walnut planting. In this particular spot, the deer kept ramming the tree tubes and eating the foliage. Many of the trees were knocked over and crushed. A decade went by and eventually only one remained. It’s fast growth was able to sneak by the deer and create a canopy outside of that browse line. I mulched the tree periodically and would visit a few times a year and sit in its shade for lunch. It was a joy to rest under.
Over time, I experimented with many other Prunus at my farm and began harvesting seed off the different species that had some sort of cultivated use. Sloe plum and Mirabelle plum are good examples. They had existing markets for the seeds and plants. During this same period, I had the thought of growing the seedlings off this giant and ever vigorous cherry on the highest hill at my farm. It was beginning to take shape and look more and more spectacular. It did have some fruit production but it was difficult to climb and harvest much of it. The birds ate the fruit quickly as they ripened. It too had flowers relished by bumblebees and true to form, the fruit did taste like old cough medicine like its parent plant. Eventually, I was able to grow a population from this plant. Now I had a couple of hundred seedling plants that clearly did not have the weeping characteristic. I found that interesting but was even more exciting was that by accident I had created a more vigorous form of cherry from seed with dense branching and strong upright growth. So even from one plant, a population can exist within it to reproduce itself in large numbers as the ‘average’ tree. From here you can create a variety of strong growing upright ornamental cherry trees which you could reproduce from cuttings and seeds too. The coldest temperature in this location was recorded on one of my max-min thermometers at -27F one winter morning. There was no winter damage on the tree.
Snow Mountain could provide a structural component to trees in an urban landscape as an ornamental cherry able to withstand wind and ice damage. Not far away are several damaged northern pecan trees due to straight line winds. This location is about 100-200 ft. from the pecans. Surrounded by walnuts, hicans and Himalayan White pine this tree quickly reached the canopy and began shading the other trees. I removed the lower limbs early in the trees history making it even more difficult to climb and collect fruit.
‘Snow Mountain’ could be cultivated as a variety rooted from cuttings and then added to the existing line up of urban trees. It could be sold to nurseries who could reproduce it and promote it. It could have some very nice wood characteristics too so the trunks could be harvested at the end of their lives even as urban wood. Urban wood is cool now too. There is nothing wrong with that in terms of marketing and selling a unique variety of cherry. Remember most cherries are flat topped or broad spreading small or medium sized trees pretty much like most crabapple cultivars. This opposite cherry is a good idea as a shade tree plus the fruit quantity is very low. Heavy fruiting is not desired in shade trees. The likelihood of that ever happening and being successful is low. I think it would be better for me to take a few seeds and give them away so anyone can grow their own population and create a new type of ornamental cherry adapted to their location. From that vantage point, there is many possibilities of which will express themselves over time. Like the average tree, there is always room for expansion and new discoveries.
It is the connection I have to this tree and what it means to me personally that I find comforting in many ways. The cherry tree creates this environment for me just as it has for the animals and plants around it. When I go there and rest underneath its branches, I do not think about the tree and its discovery. I marvel at its beauty. I listen to the bees. I sit in its cool shade in the summer. I sometimes stare at the trunk and wonder what is behind the bark. What are the colors of the wood inside? I think about members of my family past and present and the world family too. It is no wonder I put it on the top of the hill. It’s a beacon to me calling out reminding me of my journey through time with my family. That is the cherry on top. The memories that frame this time are like a cherry tree filling space with beautiful blossoms, fruits and leaves.
Average and uniform is life in the real world tree farm as it manifests into diversity that is not so average and uniform. But then again, nothing is.
