for those who’ve bought or raised them (particularly interested if you’ve grown from seed, since I have seeds):
How long until cornelian cherries bear fruit?
Just wondering if I should be taking my vitamins…
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I have some grafted trees which I made myself in spring of of 2015 that have numerous flower buds, so should fruit next year. Also some seedlings that would be one year older which also have a few flower buds- c Mas is known for making male only flowers early in life, so the seedlings might not set fruit in '18. Grafted tree seem pretty precocious.
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I planted grafted but small trees from Fedco 4 years ago. In their 3rd season they had a couple fruits. 4th season a handful. Hoping for more next year. They don’t grow that quickly for me, but steadily putting on steam as the years go by.
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I planted a Pioneer and a Sunrise from Our Green World in 2015. The Sunrise had a few blossoms in mid-April of 2017. They have had to put up with weeds, so that is probably slowing them down. Maybe in another year or two when they both blossom I will get to taste them.
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How have your Cornelian cherries tasted? I am considering ordering from Fedco, as I can’t find the trees anywhere else! Really wanted to try U-26 from OGW but they are out of stock until who knows when.
From seed - 4 years is a normal time, of course under good conditions and care.
Have you grown out many from seed? Do they vary a lot from the parent plant, or can you count on the seedlings to produce good fruit?
I also am curious to hear comments on what they taste like.
@Katie_didnt_Z4b Not many. Last time I planted seeds was around 15 years ago. In my case they do varied significantly from the mother variety. Mostly by size - they were/are smaller than the mother, and also by time of ripening. Here wild Cornelian cherries are very common, so the pollinator could have been a wild tree. As for flavor/aroma - not much difference.
I see most of you are concerned by the fruit’s tannic astringency (which is not nearly as bad as say persimmon astringency) - it’s a matter of ripeness. Indeed, some varieties are less astringent, but even the more astringent ones lose it when dead ripe - that is very dark red and soft to the touch.
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I got some fruit from seedling trees that are 5 years old. Grafted trees made fruit after 2! Taste is like cherry-pomegranate-cranberry, best to wait until they drop off the tree.
from grafted varieties.
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I’d say they are not the best fruit in the yard. They are very sour and tannic until very ripe - which is hard to see because they look pretty much the same for a quite a while before they are really ripe. Then they get over ripe and don’t taste great then either. So the window of time when they are decent if not great is pretty short and not super easy to tell. If you have plenty of space, these are ok trees, but if I was making choices for my small yard again I’m not sure I would choose these again given their performance to date. Still pretty small after 5 years, don’t make much fruit yet, and the fruit they have put off has not been amazing.
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None of my cornelian cherries have fruited yet – one of my grafted trees might have except that I didn’t have a pollinator for it – but one of the things that really appeals to me about cornelian cherries is that they bloom early but apparently suffer very little damage from the fluctuating spring temperatures that are so typical here in the Southeast, at least that’s what I hear. I’ve planted some cornelian cherries in frost pockets where I wouldn’t have hope in growing much else. (One notable exception, by the way, is American hazelnuts, which have been super reliable for me year after year even though they bloom early and were planted in as much of a frost pocket as any spot on my place.)
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Thanks for posting I was wondering the same thing…timeline to fruiting…but they look like a great ornamental if all else fails.
I was looking for information on U-26 and came across this post. Has anyone tried U-26? It’s not listed in the excellent document below, so I have no information on its sweetness relative to OGW’s other cultivars. I’m looking for the sweetest Cornelian cherries. There was one small Cornus mas tree where I went to college in Oberlin, Ohio, and I used to love to pick the berries off the ground and snack on them. I hope they’ll still taste as good when I’m not a hungry forager.
not sure how often he’s on here yet but little john seems to know as much cornelian as anyone else i know of…
My cornelian cherries are not thriving after 6 years. One might be dead. The other is not much bigger than when planted. They are downhill from a cornfield, so may get some chemical runoff.