''Prunus fruticosa'', the European dwarf cherry, dwarf cherry, Mongolian cherry or steppe cherry is a

deciduous In the fields of horticulture and botany, the term deciduous () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed Leaf, leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, aft ...

xerophytic A xerophyte () is a species of plant that has adaptations to survive in an environment with little liquid water. Examples of xerophytes include cactus, cacti, pineapple and some gymnosperm plants. The morphology (biology), morphology and physiology ...

, winter-hardy, cherry-bearing

shrub A shrub or bush is a small to medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees by their multiple ...

. It is also called ground cherry and European ground cherry, but is not to be confused with plants in the distinct "Groundcherry" genus of ''

Physalis ''Physalis'' (, , , , from 'bladder') is a genus of approximately 75 to 90 flowering plants in the Solanum, nightshade family (Solanaceae), which are native to the Americas and Australasia. At least 46 species are endemism, endemic to Mexico. ...

''. ''Prunus fruticosa'' is native to central and southeastern Europe, Ukraine, European Russia, the northern Caucasus, Kazakhstan, and the Altai.

Description

As a shrub ''Prunus fruticosa'' grows high and as wide, in almost any soil, but best in loamy soil, spreading via suckers. Roots are abundant. The plant requires full sun, it is a

steppe In physical geography, a steppe () is an ecoregion characterized by grassland plains without closed forests except near rivers and lakes. Steppe biomes may include: * the montane grasslands and shrublands biome * the tropical and subtropica ...

rather than a forest plant, although it does form thickets at the edges of open forest. The

bark Bark may refer to: Common meanings * Bark (botany), an outer layer of a woody plant such as a tree or stick * Bark (sound), a vocalization of some animals (which is commonly the dog) Arts and entertainment * ''Bark'' (Jefferson Airplane album), ...

is dark brown with yellow

lenticel A lenticel is a porous tissue consisting of cells with large intercellular spaces in the periderm of the secondarily thickened organs and the Bark (botany), bark of woody stems and roots of gymnosperms and dicotyledonous flowering plants. It func ...

s. The

leaves A leaf (: leaves) is a principal appendage of the stem of a vascular plant, usually borne laterally above ground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, stem, ...

are oblanceolate to obovate, about 12 mm by 6 mm, with acuminate apex,

glabrous Glabrousness () is the technical term for a lack of hair, down, setae, trichomes, or other such covering. A glabrous surface may be a natural characteristic of all or part of a plant or animal, or be due to loss because of a physical condition, ...

above, thick, serrated with crenate margin, dark green, yellow in autumn, with a short petiole. The

flower Flowers, also known as blooms and blossoms, are the reproductive structures of flowering plants ( angiosperms). Typically, they are structured in four circular levels, called whorls, around the end of a stalk. These whorls include: calyx, m ...

s are white hermaphroditic blossoms in leafy

bract In botany, a bract is a modified or specialized leaf, associated with a reproductive structure such as a flower, inflorescence axis or cone scale. Bracts are usually different from foliage leaves in size, color, shape or texture. They also lo ...

s located 2-4 each on short peduncles in sessile

umbel UMBEL (Upper Mapping and Binding Exchange Layer) is a logically organized knowledge graph of 34,000 concepts and entity types that can be used in information science for relating information from disparate sources to one another. It was retired ...

s. They are pollinated by bees. In the Northern Hemisphere, the plant flowers in May. The fruit is light to dark red, globose to pyriform, about 8–25 mm in diameter, ripening in August. The taste is sour-sweet, or tart.

Uses

As a sour tasting cherry, the fruit is used in cooking, and for jams and jellies. It has medicinal uses as an

astringent An astringent (sometimes called adstringent) is a chemical that shrinks or constricts body tissues. The word derives from the Latin '' adstringere'', which means "to bind fast". Astringency, the dry, puckering or numbing mouthfeel caused by t ...

. The flowers are its basis of bee-keeping honey plant.

Cultivation

''Prunus fruticosa'' is planted in

hedgerow A hedge or hedgerow is a line of closely spaced (3 feet or closer) shrubs and sometimes trees, planted and trained to form a barrier or to mark the boundary of an area, such as between neighbouring properties. Hedges that are used to separate ...

s as an

ornamental plant Ornamental plants or ''garden plants'' are plants that are primarily grown for their beauty but also for qualities such as scent or how they shape physical space. Many flowering plants and garden varieties tend to be specially bred cultivars th ...

privacy screen and

windbreak A windbreak (shelterbelt) is a planting usually made up of one or more rows of trees or shrubs planted in such a manner as to provide shelter from the wind and to protect soil from erosion. They are commonly planted in hedgerows around the ed ...

, and as a host plant for bees and other beneficial insects and birds. The shrub's network of penetrating roots are useful for soil stabilization in designed landscapes and

habitat restoration Ecological restoration, or ecosystem restoration, is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, destroyed or transformed. It is distinct from conservation in that it attempts to retroactively repair ...

projects. The hardiness of ''Prunus fruticosa'' is a desirable quality in grafting and production of horticultural

cultivar A cultivar is a kind of Horticulture, cultivated plant that people have selected for desired phenotypic trait, traits and which retains those traits when Plant propagation, propagated. Methods used to propagate cultivars include division, root a ...

s. It is grafted to ''

Prunus avium ''Prunus avium'', commonly called wild cherry, sweet cherry or gean is a species of Prunus subg. Cerasus, cherry, a flowering plant in the rose family, Rosaceae. It is native to Eurasia and naturalized elsewhere. It is an ancestor of ''Prunus c ...

'' 'tree' rootstock, forming rounded top trees.

Classification

;Linnaeus Linnaeus included this species in his ''Species Plantarum'', referencing the ''Pinax'' of

Gaspard Bauhin Gaspard Bauhin or Caspar Bauhin (; 17 January 1560 – 5 December 1624), was a Switzerland, Swiss botanist whose ''Pinax theatri botanici'' (1623) described thousands of plants and classified them in a manner that draws comparisons to the later ...

, to whom he gives credit as "Bauh. pin. 450." The name assigned by Linnaeus is ''Prunus cerasus pumila'', where ''pumila'' means "dwarf" (a rare word in Latin) and must come from Bauhin. He regards the shub as a variety of ''

Prunus cerasus ''Prunus cerasus'' (sour cherry, tart cherry, or dwarf cherry) is an Old World species of ''Prunus'' in the subgenus ''Prunus subg. Cerasus, Cerasus'' (cherries). It has two main groups of cultivars: the dark-red Morello cherry and the lighter- ...

'', the sour cherry. ;Pallas It was first authoritatively defined by

Peter Simon Pallas Peter Simon Pallas Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS FRSE (22 September 1741 – 8 September 1811) was a Prussia, Prussian zoologist, botanist, Ethnography, ethnographer, Exploration, explorer, Geography, geographer, Geology, geologist, Natura ...

, the German naturalist invited by

Catherine the Great Catherine II. (born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 172917 November 1796), most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter I ...

to work in St. Petersburg. His unfinished ''Flora Rossica'', a description of all the plants in the Russian Empire, dedicates one page to ''Prunus fruticosa'', a shrub found ''in campis Isetensibus'', "in the plains of the Iset;" that is, the

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. He states the Linnaean synonym, giving the same reference to Bauhin, but makes the variety into a species, ''Pr. fruticosa''. The last paragraph of Page 19 states his reasons for the classification, which have nothing to do with the name, but are in true Linnaean cryptic form, in this case a

pun A pun, also known as a paronomasia in the context of linguistics, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from t ...

. The two Latin words of the pun are ''fructus'' or ''frux'', from ''fruor'', "enjoy" – a fruit is a result enjoyed – and ''frutex'', "shrub", adjective ''fruticosus'', "bushy", from a totally different root. ''Prunus'' is a grammatical feminine, so ''Prunus fruticosa'' agrees in gender. However, Pallas says ''Haec mihi tantum fructibus suis innotuit, qui distinctam itidem speciem indicare videntur'', "It came to my attention at last because of its fruit, which repeatedly seemed to indicate a distinct species." The fruit seemed ''fere Pruni forma'', "nearly in the form of ''Prunus''", especially because ''praedita oblongo nucleo'', "furnished with an oblong seed." So, Pallas moved it from ''Cerasus'' to ''Prunus''. ;Woronow In 1925 Yury Nikolaevich Voronov, known botanically as (Ju.N, G., G.N. or GJN) Woronow, made an unsuccessful effort to retain ''Cerasus'' as a genus name and move ''fruticosa'' to it, creating another synonym, ''Cerasus fruticosa''.

Hybridisation and genetic erosion

''Prunus fruticosa'', a

tetraploid Polyploidy is a condition in which the cells of an organism have more than two paired sets of ( homologous) chromosomes. Most species whose cells have nuclei (eukaryotes) are diploid, meaning they have two complete sets of chromosomes, one fro ...

with 2n=32 chromosomes, is thought to be one of the parent species of ''

'' (the sour cherry) by way of ancient crosses between it and ''

'' (the wild/sweet cherry) in the areas where the two species overlap. Both species can interbreed with each other, as well as with ''Prunus cerasus''. ''Prunus cerasus'' is now a species in its own right having developed beyond a hybrid and stabilized. A recent study of native ''Prunus fruticosa'' stands in northern Poland finds that it is disappearing there by " genetic erosion" or "disappearance of typical morphological characters". It hybridizes naturally with ''Prunus cerasus'' to form '' Prunus × eminens'', and with ''Prunus avium'' to form '' Prunus × stacei''. These forest plants are brought into closer contact with ''Prunus fruticosa'' by the modern disappearance of "contemporaneous sites of the steppe relics" once common in northern Poland, due to forest management since the 18th century, and the planting of stands of ''Prunus cerasus'', which are more prolific in pollen.

References

External links

* * {{Taxonbar, from=Q164174 fruticosa Cherries Flora of Middle Europe Flora of Southeastern Europe Flora of Ukraine Flora of Central European Russia Flora of South European Russia Flora of East European Russia Flora of the North Caucasus Flora of Kazakhstan Flora of Altai (region) Medicinal plants Garden plants of Asia Garden plants of Europe Shrubs