What does "low chill" mean? And if you just want a tough, long lived Zone 6 cherry, what would you go with?

'Low chill' is a term that is usually associated with fruit-bearing trees and indicates an ability to produce successful crops in relatively warm winter areas.

A long-lived flowering cherry is a bit of an oxymoron......25-30 years is considered a decent lifespan for most types, although if given good care and free of disease or insect problems (not an easy accomplishment!), some may live quite a bit longer. With that caveat, Prunus x yedoensis or the Yoshino cherry is probably the quintessential flowering cherry. These are the cherry trees that grace the mall and tidal basin in Washington D.C. and various college campuses and boulevard plantings across the country.

Another example of species ambiguity... Taxonomists have never made a clear determination whether Capulin cherries fall under Prunus Serotina or should be classified as their own species, Prunus salicifolia. Capulin is extremely closely related to Wild Black Cherry, but has a different range, geographically much farther South in the mountains of Mexico and Guatemala, where it is well adapted to the low chill conditions there.

(personally, I would tend to view Capulin as a subspecies, and there are many different varieties of Capulin cherries)

I was confused by "low"...when I see "low" close to "chill" I think "low" temperatures. I'm used to the opposite problem from what you describe.

The typical "ornamental" cherry is a delicate "foo foo" cultivar. I see them as traps for amateur gardeners...they look amazing when you see them in botanical gardens, universities with professional landscapers, or in the yards of serious hobbyists, but tend to die or generate work in your typical homeowner's yard.

Your post raises an interesting possibility...if I were willing to compromise blooms a little, could I go to one of the wild ancestors of ornamental cherries and get something tougher? Have there been any attempts to cross the tough black cherry or choke cherry with...not an ornamental cherry I guess, but one of the prettier sweet cherries?

Although just an anecdote, I was surprised one day last summer, when literally picking a bit of low-hanging fruit on one of my old, nearly decrepit "Canada red cherries", which are maroon-leaved cultivar of chokecherry, said fruit was sweet. Sure wasn't expecting that, and I'm also not sure it wasn't an anomaly. But sweet and good it was. Nevertheless, I will continue to let the birds do most of the eating off those two trees, for whatever time they (the trees) have left.

Generally speaking, trees from genera that produce known food-grade fruits have been manipulated by man for millennia. I'd suspect it is that, more than any other factor, which has led to the current taxonomic confusion.

The cultivar 'Mesabi' is a cross between Bing and Montmorency. It produces fruits that are somewhere in between that of a sweet cherry and a sour cherry, and takes after its parent Montmorency in the fact that it is "self-fertile" (does not need to be pollinated by a different variety to produce fruit). The seeds inside the fruit are sterile of course since the hybrid is triploid (3n=24 chromosomes).

To my knowledge, there has never been any commercial application for crossing ornamental flowering cherries with sweet cherry varieties, and the available information about such hybrids is very sparse, but the seeds from such a hybrid tree would be able to grow (since both the first generation parent species had 16 chromosomes). I would imagine though that the resulting hybrid might not grow as vigorously, you might read up more on Outbreeding Depression.

"Outbreeding depression refers to cases where offspring from crosses between two different different populations have a lower level of fitness than offspring from crosses between individuals from the same population.

One of the ways that outbreeding depression can occur is by the breakdown of biochemical or physiological compatibilities between genes in the different breeding populations. Within local, isolated breeding populations, alleles are selected for their positive, overall effects in complementary combination with other specific alleles. Due to nonadditive gene action, the same genes may have rather different effects in different genetic backgrounds--hence, the potential evolution of locally coadapted gene complexes.

Herbert Spencer and the Harvard geneticist Edward East, a pioneer in hybrid corn research, observed that genetic crossing would disrupt the smooth operation of growth habits and physical qualities which had been established in different strains of maize over hundreds of generations by natural selection."

Oh, thanks for that, Parker. What is a chokecherry? I grow cultivated p.avium and several gean cherries. or the wild form of p.avium (and also p.cerasifera and spinosa for hedging)...and the cherries are small but sweet enough on the geans. There are a couple of venerable trees of enormous size in my local cemetery, which are enthusiastically raided by humans, birds and squirrels. Sour cherries, I have always known as morellos or the mysterious 'Duke' which I have heard of but never, to my knowledge, seen or ate.

The name chokecherry is usually used for Prunus virginiana. It is a Sec. Padus cherry, the North American analog to P. padus.

Hey Camp. That would be Prunus virginiana, an extremely common and widely dispersed native cherry. The kind I have in my yard are the so-called "Canada red cherry", a variant that has foliage that turns deep red/purple in summer. I'm not sure if it's in the trade as much these days but used to be a common item.

This state grows a great many cherries, in orchards especially in Door County.

Yup. Chokecherry is a North American shrub known for toughness and salt tolerance. Planted for erosion control and wildlife. The fruit are usable for jam. I mentioned it as the exact opposite of the "fu fu" Japanese cherries.

Has anyone developed any cultivars or hybrids of prunus serotina (black cherry)? I admire it's toughness. Does anything have the same number of chromosomes?

The hybrid is likely to be as short as its hardy parent, so you might end up getting more of a bush than a tree.

Sorry, I moved on from chokecherry. Prunus Serotina (Black cherry) is a respectable sized tree. I'd just want either something to dial up the flowers a notch so I could use it in the spots that show or make the wood a shade tougher so I could take advantage of it's salt tolerance and use it in windy spots. There are so many untapped species of cherry out there.

'Canada Red' is a Bailey nursery introduction derived from 'Schubert'. It is supposed to offer improved growth and color. Other purple leaved P. virginiana cultivars include 'Mini-Schubert', 'Robert' and 'Sharon'.

said fruit was sweet. Sure wasn't expecting that, and I'm also not sure it wasn't an anomaly

'Schubert Copper' is known for being non astringent.

A huge favourite in the UK is the beautiful glossy barked p.serrula and the less common but equally lovely Manchurian cherry, p.maackii. Have promised myself a Tibetan cherry just for stroking and admiring. I agree, Edincoln - the genus holds so much more promise than the (thankfully vanishing) Kanzan (but I will always have a love for TaiHaku, the great white cherry).

"subgenus" may be more appropriate (or maybe not, taxonomists have put both sweet and sour cherries into the subgenus Cerasus). All these different cherry species are very closely related, if one wants to consider them different species. This is one example where the line separating different species is not a clear one. It could even be possible to consider the different cherry families as subspecies. After all, if they can freely interbreed and hybridize with each other, can they not be considered members within the same species? (by this definition we could divide all cherries into only 2 groups: those with 16 chromosomes and those with 32)

Or one could attempt to divide cherries into different families: Sweet cherries (P. avium), sour cherries, Black cherries plus Capulin native to the American continent (put into same group), and Asian flowering cherries.

Perhaps better classification could be provided if taxonomists utilized multiple degrees of species relatedness/separation, because it is ambiguous whether some of the different cherries should be classified as entirely separate species or subspecies within a singular species, neither of which would be wholly accurate.

"After all, if they can freely interbreed and hybridize with each other,
can they not be considered members within the same species?"

The ability to reproduce with another type of plant is generally not a defining or limiting characteristic of a species. There are many species that commonly and freely reproduce with other species (look at most quercus species, for instance).

By this reckoning, plums, apricots, etc. would have to be fit in somewhere. Quite an unwieldly tribe, and human interference (plant breeding) has done nothing but further confuse the issue. That looks to me like somebody's life work-untangling Prunus!

wisconsitom, it gets even more complicated. I have come across sources claiming that it is possible for quince and pear to be crossbred and freely hybridized (and they are not even in the same genus!), although there are a whole bunch of issues with that because reduced vigor or sterility usually results, it depends on which cultivars of pear were used, and there is a very low success rate.

related threads:

Any Pear or Apple varieties with an aroma like Quince?

Will these fruits cross-polinate - same gensus/different continen

Quince and pear are close enough to be graft compatible - quince has been used as a root stock for orchard pears in commercial practice. A synonym of Cydonia oblonga is Pyrus cydonia.

Cherry Blossom vs Cherry Tree: Flowers Or Fruits? This article explains all differences between these trees.