I was browsing Raintree Nursery today looking at all their varieties because they have their trees back in stock and wondered if they have a cross between a sweet and sour cherry. I read that the romance series is a cross between a tart cherry and Mongolian cherry. Many stated it would be hard for a tart and sweet cherry to cross because of chromosomes. I found there was a tree called Kansas Sweet which actually is supposed to be a cross between a tart and sweet cherry. What are people’s thoughts on this. For a cross between a sweet and sour cherry there not not seem to be any threads on it.
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They call them interspecific sweet and sour cherry hybrids. Breeders have worked on it many years to enlarge the cherry gene pool. Sour cherries can be grown almost everywhere but sweet cherries cannot be grown hardly anywhere. Imagine the flood of sweet cherries on the market once they figure out how to grow them better.
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If it truly does taste like a sweet cherry my questions would be in zones 4 and up what would the reason to plant the romance series if this is a thing and why are people not talking about this? It kind of sounds like the Kansas sweet cherry is a sweet cherry that can function like a tart cherry in making pies. In my experience that is what most people are looking for in the romance series.
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It all depends on a person’s sources of conversation and information. I’m frequently surprised to learn that the characteristic of a plant I thought was little known has actually been under study for decades.
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Montmorency is supposedly a sweet/ sour cross. i grafted 2 z4 hardy sweet scions to mine this spring and both grafts took and so far are growing well. monty is also listed as a pollinator for some sweet cherries.
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I don’t know a lot but know some info and sweet cherries have a diploid genes and tart is a tetraploid. You can use chemicals to increase ploidy level of sweet cherries to make compatible crosses. Sweets are not self fertile until we put the tart self fertile gene in sweet cherries like White Gold. So the mix of tart and sweet genes is quite extensive in both sweet and tart cherries sold today.
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I think they are commonly called Duke cherries. If you are expecting a sweet cherry I suspect you will be disappointed.
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Maybe that is why I heard so many good things about montmorency
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There are some things to know here “Researchers crossed Van and Stella cherry trees to come up with the Lapins cherry” . “The Van cherry tree is widely known to be one of the heaviest fruit producers out of all cherry varieties” they needed self pollinating sweet cherries Lapins cherry - Wikipedia . This type of cherry is unique because it means cross pollination is now possible. There are not many of these cherries. There is more to know Cross polinated sweet and sour cherry trees #231487 - Ask Extension
" Asked March 17, 2015, 2:09 PM EDT
Hi, I just planted a Montmorency cherry tree. I know these are self polinating, but I am trying to figure out if there is a sweet cherry variety (suitable for the front range) that is compatible. I would like the Montmorency to be the pollen source for the sweet cherry (and ideally it goes both ways so my Montmorency has a higher yield). There is good information about universal polinators, but it is hard to pinpoint varieties that bloom at the same time as Montmorency and thrive on the front range. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME! I am a bit new to fruit trees, so hopefully this makes sense.
Boulder County Colorado
Expert Response
Great question. Perhaps you’ve seen this entry from our Fact Sheet:
SOUR AND SWEET CHERRY
"All sour cherries are self-fruitful, such as Montmorency, North Star, Balaton, Meteor, English Morello, Early Richmond, Hansen Bush Cherry and Nanking. Most sweet cherries are self-unfruitful(self-incompatible, SI) and require cross pollination with another variety as the pollen source.
Some varieties, e.g. Bing, Lambert, Royal Ann/Napoleon, are also cross-unfruitful and cannot be depended upon to provide pollen for each other. Index, Lapins, Skeena, Sweetheart, WhiteGold, Sonata, Stella, Symphony, Sunburst, and BlackGold are self-fruitful (SF) sweet cherries that can serve as “universal” pollen sources for many self-unfruitful sweet cherry varieties (Stella does not work for Bing in some areas).
Their use as “universal” pollinators should also take bloom timing into consideration as follows. Early-bloom: SI – Somerset; SF – Lapins and Skeena. Early- to early-mid-bloom: SI – Kristin, Chelan, and Black Republican; SF – Sweetheart and WhiteGold. Mid- to late-mid-bloom: SI – Royalton, Summit, Ranier, Royal Ann / Napoleon, Bing, Burlat, Van, Regina, Lambert, Sam, and Windsor; SF – Sonata, Stella, Symphony, and Sunburst. Late-bloom: SI – Gold and Hudson; SF – BlackGold. Move bees into orchards on the first day of bloom."
It does appear that Montmorency and Black Tartarian will cross, but they don’t reliably bloom at the same time (M is late and BT is early).
http://www.sandybarnursery.com/cherry-pollination-page.htm
Deryn Davidson Replied April 02, 2015, 6:21 PM EDT"
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good to know Clark. thanks. i plan to save some monty seeds and plant them in my nursery bed this fall then graft them over to z4 hardy sweets. once they grow out some ill graft a monty scion for pollination. should make for a more compact sweet cherry tree.
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