Epicurus: “We are grateful to blessed Nature, because she made what is necessary easy to acquire and what is hard to acquire unnecessary.”

Gifts of wisdom and pleasure

In the forests of semi-mountainous and mountainous regions with an altitude of 300 m to 1.400 m, where the annual rainfall exceeds 600 mm, the Cornelian cherries grow and strengthen. Roots deep, fibrous, to stabilize the soil on the slopes where it grows naturally, preventing possible erosions. Deep roots, to survive centuries of life, since a super-centenarian forest tree can reach 250 years.

The height of the tree ranges from 2 to 9 m. The growth speed of the plant is slow compared to the other trees in the forest. Every year it grows from 30.4 to 69.5 cm.

The Cornelian cherry tree loves permanence so transplant attempts are not easy. As a mountain tree, it can withstand low temperatures down to -36°C, but is affected by summer heat above 40°C.

During its systematic cultivation, water is necessary even in mountainous areas and especially when the “agricultural drought” is intense.

The tree in Greece grows naturally in various types of suitable soils including sandy to loamy and acidic to alkaline, but it shows greater growth and produces robust fruits in light soils, rich in organic matter.

The Cornelian cherries bloom first when winter comes to an end/becomes softer, after the Alkyonides Days, in the month of February. Yellow flowers precede the leaves, consisting of four sepals, four petals, three to five stamens (usually four), a pistil and grow in inflorescences. Bees are fed with rich nectar and pollen from its flowers.

The leaves are elliptical, 6 to 14 cm long and 3 to 8 cm wide, and have the ability to adjust their color to each season. In spring they are light to dark green. From summer to autumn, they are green, gradually turning into orange, pink and purple.

Red fruits, sometimes oblong and sometimes round, ranging from 10 to 35 mm, impress with their deep color. Sometimes they are found in pink-black – red – and very rarely in yellow shades. They ripen from the end of July to the end of October (depending on the climatic conditions) and are ready to eat. As philosophers typically claim, prediction is wisdom and this seems to be the case with Cornelian cherries as well. In the same time period as the fruits, the next year’s buds are created. The production of fruits from seedlings starts from the 7th year and gradually increases. Young shoots are fluffy green and gray in color. And the bark peels off and the color palette is gray-brown.

A proven enemy of plants in Greece, but also in other European countries, are lepidoptera. In addition, fungal infections of the species “Phytophthora spp.” and attacks by the phytopathogenic bacterium “Colletotrichum acutatum”, which causes spots on the leaves, rot and fruit drop, have been reported.