Prunus fruticosa, the European dwarf cherry, dwarf cherry, Mongolian cherry or steppe cherry is a deciduous, xerophytic, winter-hardy, cherry-bearing shrub. 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.[1]
Prunus fruticosa is native to Ciscaucasia, western Siberia, Kazakhstan, Xinjiang China, western Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, Belarus, Moldova, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Austria, and Italy.[2] [3] [4]
As a shrub Prunus fruticosa grows 1m-2mm (03feet-07feetm) 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 rather than a forest plant, although it does form thickets at the edges of open forest.
The bark is dark brown with yellow lenticels. The leaves are oblanceolate to obovate, about 12 mm by 6 mm, with acuminate apex, glabrous above, thick, serrated with crenate margin, dark green, yellow in autumn, with a short petiole.
The flowers are white hermaphroditic blossoms in leafy bracts located 2-4 each on short peduncles in sessile umbels. 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.
As a sour tasting cherry, the fruit is used in cooking, and for jams and jellies. It has medicinal uses as an astringent.[5] The flowers are its basis of bee-keeping honey plant.
Prunus fruticosa is planted in hedgerows as an ornamental plant privacy screen and windbreak, 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 projects.
The hardiness of Prunus fruticosa is a desirable quality in grafting and production of horticultural cultivars. It is grafted to Prunus avium 'tree' rootstock, forming rounded top trees.[4]
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.
Prunus fruticosa, a tetraploid with 2n=32 chromosomes, is thought to be one of the parent species of Prunus cerasus (the sour cherry) by way of ancient crosses between it and Prunus avium (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.[9]
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.[10]