At least three cultivated cherry trees produce wood of considerable
value. The wood of the cherry is hard, close-grained, solid, durable,
a handsome pale red, or brown tinged with red. _Prunus avium_, the
Sweet Cherry, furnishes a wood which, if sufficient care be taken to
season it, is of much value in cabinet-making and for the manufacture
of musical instruments. _Prunus mahaleb_ is a much smaller tree than
the former but its wood, as much as there is of it, is even more
valuable, being very hard and fragrant and dark enough in color to
take on a beautiful mahogany-like polish. In France the wood of
the Mahaleb cherry is held in high esteem, under the name _Bois
de St. Lucie_, in cabinet-making and for toys, canes, handles and
especially for the making of tobacco pipes. In Japan the wood of
_Prunus pseudocerasus_ is said to be in great demand for engraving
and in making the blocks used in printing cloth and wall-paper. In
America the wood of the orchard species of cherries is seldom used for
domestic purposes, that of the wild species being so much more cheaply
obtainable and serving all purposes quite as well.
To people who know it only for its fruit, the cherry does not appear
particularly desirable as an ornamental. But wild and cultivated
cherries furnish many beautiful trees in a genus peculiar for the
beauty of its species. The color and abundance of the flowers, fruits
and leaves of the cultivated cherries and the fact that they are
prolific of forms with double flowers, weeping, fastigiate or other
ornamental habits, make the several species of this plant valuable as
ornamentals. Besides, they are vigorous and rapid in growth, hardy,
easy of culture, comparatively free from pests and adapted to a great
diversity of soils and climates. Both the ornamental and the edible
cherries are very beautiful in spring when abundantly covered with
flowers, which usually open with the unfolding leaves, as well as
throughout the summer when overspread with lustrous green foliage and
most of them are quite as conspicuously beautiful in the autumn when
the leaves turn from green to light and dark tints of red. All will
agree that a cherry tree in full fruit is a most beautiful object. In
the winter when the leaves have fallen, some of the trees, especially
of the ornamental varieties, are very graceful and beautiful, others
are often picturesque, and even the somewhat stiff and formal Sweet
Cherries are attractive plants in the garden or along the roadside.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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