With over forty Cornelian cherries, Cornus mas producing their curious, yet picturesque, burst of blossoms in an otherwise still dreary, winter-dressed, landscape, look for our true signs of spring on Elm Avenue, Garden Avenue, Ash Avenue, Willow Avenue, Fir Avenue, Birch Avenue, Cypress Avenue, Mountain Avenue, Central Avenue, Pond Road, Field Road, Perilla Path and other locations.In Northeast Ohio, it really has been the year of the Mas… Cornus mas (CM) to be exact and colloquially known as Corneliancherry dogwood. cultivation from its New York beginnings Peter J Hatch in The Fruits and Fruit Trees of Monticello documents “…Jefferson planted four seeds…in 1774…” Originally in this country much desired for its fruits, over time the fruit went out of use and Corneliancherry dogwood became more appreciated as an ornamental plant, transferred from the orchard to the general landscape. Joan Parry Dutton in Plants of Colonial Williamsburg informs that “…cornelian cherry was introduced into Dutch New Amsterdam from Holland in 1642 by Adrian Van der Donke – Yonkers was named for him…” Spreading into wider U.S. But yet there be sundry trees of them growing in the gardens of such as love rare and dainty plants, whereof I have a tree or two in my garden.” John Parkinson (1567-1650), apothecary to James I (1566-1625), included it in his monumental Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris, in the orchard section, “…the flowers are many small yellow tufts, as it were of short haires or threads set together, which come forth before any leafe, … the fruit are long and round berries, of the bigness of small olives, with an hard round stone within them, like unto an olive stone…By reason of the pleasantnesse in them when they are ripe, they are much desired…” The great herbalist, John Gerard (1545-1612) included it in the illustrated Herball, or Generall Historie of Plants, “…The floures come forth in the Spring in the moneth of Aprill: the berries are ripe in Autumne….it growes not wild in England.

Introduced into Britain in the sixteenth-century, we have written accounts from notable early authors. Throughout the Middle Ages it was historically cultivated in monastery gardens.

This tart/sweet fruit continued to be appreciated in Europe over the millennia. Exceedingly early knowledge of these plants’ fruits was recounted by Lee Reich in his Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention, “…a fruit that has been enjoyed by humankind for the past seven thousand years! At a site in northern Greece, early Neolithic peoples left traces of their meals of cornelian cherry, along with remains of einkorn, wheat, barley, lentils and peas.” These lustrous, red fruits, partially hidden by the leaves, were thought to resemble carnelian, a red form of semitransparent quartz, hence the common name’s origin. When successfully pollinated, these flowers will produce in late summer, fleshy 5/8-inch, oblong drupes.

Cornus mas summer