Share:
Cornelian cherry - cultivation, processing and healing effects
The Cornelian Cherry is an almost forgotten large shrub, an important bee pasture, it provides plenty of food for birds and provides us with delicious fruits that are full of vitamin C..
contents
- Origin of the cornelian cherry
- Occurrence in Germany
- A warm friend
- Golden flowers, red fruits
- Early flowering
- A tough bar
- Botanical relationship
- Cultivation forms of the Cornelian cherry
- An ecological superstar
- Harvest cornelian cherries
- An old crop
- Cornelian cherry as a medicinal plant
- An enrichment of the kitchen
- The cornelian cherry in the garden
Origin of the cornelian cherry
This dogwood plant originated in West Asia, northern Iran, Armenia and Turkey, the Caucasus in southern Europe and southern Central Europe as far as Luxembourg and the south of Germany. From the Caucasus she migrated to the northwest after the last ice age. Very often it is in the Danube meadows of Hungary and Lower Austria. It is widespread in Germany, but few of them belong to the original wild shrubs - most of them are planted.
The Cornelian cherry is widespread in this country, where it is mostly planted shrubs. (Image: abcmedia / fotolia.com) Occurrence in Germany
By nature, the cornelian cherry grows especially in the south and west of Germany, near Cologne and Frankfurt am Main, in the Lower Rhine Bay, in Saarland and on the Moselle, near Regensburg, but also in the southern Harz, in the Saale valley and near Dresden.
A warm friend
It is a character plant of undergrowth in sparse forests; she loves sunny slopes and forest edges. It was also widespread in alluvial forests, but outside the alder zone in non-flooded areas. It prefers limestone soils.
It does not need bright sunlight, but grows as a forest plant even in the shade of larger trees, especially in the company of willow, wild roses, ivy, honeysuckle, hornbeam and hazelnut.
Golden flowers, red fruits
A cornelian can reach over 8 meters in height, but it needs 50 years, after 20 years it is about 3 meters high. Their stems are about 20 cm thick. The bark of the young shrubs is yellowish-gray, peeling off in older trees. The shoots are greenish hairy and later bald.
The typical leaves are elliptic to pointed and up to 10 cm long. On the surface they shine. In autumn, the foliage turns yellow to orange. The golden yellow flowers are in small umbels. Dogwoods have four petals on each flower.
The plants develop two different buds: The leaf buds are long, the inflorescences shaped spherically. The fruits of this dogwood shine red, are about 2 cm long and form around a stone core red pulp. Among them, the shrub bears its name "cherry", but is not related to the cherries.
The fruits taste slightly sour and excellent. They can be eaten raw, boiled in tea, processed into jellies, sauces or desserts.
Early flowering
The cornelian blooms very early, already in February and early March. That's why she belongs in every natural garden to feed the threatened bees and wasps. A sea of small flowers sets a golden yellow splash of color in the still barren landscape.
Cornelian cherries produce small yellow flowers very early in the year, providing plenty of food for bees and wasps. (Image: fibonaccci / fotolia.com) A tough bar
The dogwood plants got their name from their hard wood. The wood has a dark core and a reddish white spint. No wood in Europe is harder - cornelian even sinks in the water.
Botanical relationship
The plant belongs to the order Cornales and the family of the Cornaceae, also called hornbeams. The genus Cornus, so dogwood, contain the cornelian cherries as a subgenus. These include our cornelian and East Asian species such as the Chinese Cornelian .
In Germany next to her grows the red dogwood with softer wood. Another species, the Swedish dogwood, grows only in northern Germany. The Asian and Chinese Cornelian Cherry also grow in Germany, but almost exclusively in botanical gardens, lately also spread the American Blumenhartriegel in private gardens.
Corneal cherries can be distinguished well from other dogwoods in winter, because only they develop the flower buds.
Cultivation forms of the Cornelian cherry
It is as useful as it is beautiful, and therefore there are a number of cultivated forms of it. More common are Alba with white fruits, Aurea with yellow leaves and red fruits, Elegantissima, whose leaves have a yellow or pink border, Nana, a dwarf variety.
Other forms were not bred for aesthetics, but towards more productive fruits. Their "cherries" weigh up to three times as much as the wild form. These include Titus with medium-sized fruits, but which grows quickly or Devin with fruits that are twice as heavy as those of wild cornelian.
The best fruit plant among them is Jolico: the fruits are about 6.5 g heavy, more than three times as much as the wild form, and the core is less than ten percent. The proportion of vitamin C is extremely high, and a high proportion of sugar also leads to a sweeter taste than with conventional cherries.
Cornelian cherries, both wild and in the breeding form are survivors. They have no problem with heat, cold or dryness. They only tolerate no compacted soil and no waterlogging. The extremely hard wood even withstands forest fires, and wildlife bite their teeth off.
The wood of the medicinal herb is so hard and heavy that it sinks in the water. (Image: Harald Biebel / fotolia.com) An ecological superstar
If you want to plant your garden in the wild and at the same time enjoy the splendor of flowers and harvest your own fruit, you have made the ideal choice. Garden owners usually plant them as an ornament. The beauty, however, is ecologically valuable: its dense root network protects the soil from erosion. It is therefore ideal for, for example, consolidating the soil in gardens on slopes.
Their leaves and shoots serve various wild plants as food, from hares to deer. Its flowers are rich in nectar and pollen, making it the most important manger for bees and other insects besides the sallow-willow.
The fruits feed thrushes, grosbeak, finches, jays, nuthatches and many other species of birds, as well as endangered ragweed such as dormouse, garden dormouse and dormouse.
The shrub forms several small stems and grows in width as in height. The hard wood can be cut back well, and the cornelian cherry is an excellent hedge plant. It suffers neither from pests nor under biting and even defies vandalism. It is suitable for small private gardens with a maximum height of eight meters and slow growth.
Harvest cornelian cherries
In September, most fruits are mature. Wild cornel is best harvested immediately before overripe, because then the sugar content is highest and they can be easily picked. With sugar-rich fruit forms, however, we can harvest even in a precocious state.
In a small bush, we pick the fruit off, with larger-than-man-sized trunks, we lay a cloth on the ground in front of the plant, then hit with a pole against the branches and collect the fallen down cherries. We repeat this in the maturing period every three days.
When the fruits turn dark red and soft in September, they are ready for harvest. (Image: groisboeck / fotolia.com) An old crop
The fruits ate people of the Stone Age in large quantities. We know that from stilt houses in Italy.
Hundreds of names can be found from ancient Rome to Persia of antiquity, and in almost all the languages of Central, Southern and Eastern Europe. The Trojan Horse is built in the Iliad from the wood of the Cornelian Cherry, and the hard wood was the material for spear shafts.
Moreover, the Macedonian phalanx, with which Alexander the Great conquered Asia, was only possible through the cornelian cherry. No other wood was hard enough and did not splinter to make the six-meter lances. Consequently, Greek poets and later Roman poets described lances as "cornets". The ancient Greeks also fed pigs with the fruits.
In Rome, she was part of the city myth. It grew on the Palatine, and according to legend, should the mythical city founder Romulus here have pushed his spear into the ground from which then grew the tree.
In the baroque style, she structured the shaped hedges of the sculpture gardens, flourishing in monasteries and palace gardens. Impressive specimens can still be found there, for instance on the slopes of the Heidelberg Castle and in the Loccum monastery garden in Lower Saxony or the Baroque Park in Rheinsberg and Tiergarten Berlin.
The Turks made juice from the fruit and used it to color their caps red; in Germany they were eaten raw or as compote. Catholics made a folk version of the Rosary out of the cherry pits. In addition, the seeds were roasted as a cheap coffee substitute. People roasted them and then cooked them up.
Gathering wild cherries gave poor people in the countryside an extra benefit, because in the warmer region of Germany, the plant appeared in large quantities. In 1918, the pound on the Viktualienmarkt in Munich cost 60 pfennigs.
Even more popular was the wood in traditional crafts. Firstly, it is very hard and secondly extremely dense. It is easy to polish and difficult to split. Therefore, it was for objects that had to endure stress as the first choice: For spokes of coach wheels, for ax handles, knife handles, masonry and carpentry tools, but also for rulers.
She was sought after as a walking stick. The village Ziegenhain near Jean specialized in the production of these "goathunters". For these sticks there were extra cornelian gardens. The shrubs cultivated there manipulated the manufacturers so that the branches turned.
Cornelian cherry as a medicinal plant
Since the Middle Ages, the dogwood plant is known as a medicinal plant. Hildegard von Bingen saw in baths of bark, wood and leaves a remedy for the gout, the fruits should, according to her, help against stomach upset.
She wrote: "The Cornelian Cherry is warm, and its warmth is mild, and it has sweet moisture in it. So take their bark, wood, and leaves, and boil them in water, and make a bath of them. And anyone who suffers from gout, be it a child, a young person or an old one, often bathes in it and surrounds themselves in these baths (with these leaves). And he does that in the summer, when the tree is green, and the child and the young person will get the best of their health. It will be quite useful to the old man, but not to the same extent as the child and the boy. And so they will feel better. And the fruit of this tree does not harm man when he eats it, but it cleanses and strengthens the sick as well as the healthy stomach; it benefits mankind for his health. "
In the 18th century, the fruit was supposed to help against hemoptysis and relieve fever, as well as "belly flow". Oil extracted from the wood was supposed to help against cancer and a wine cooked with the berries would remove kidney stones. The leaves put doctors on bleeding wounds.
Today we know it more precisely: Cornus contains mucus and tannins and has a high content of vitamin C (up to 125 mg per 100 g), as well as up to 3% free acids.
For example, the fruits can be processed into a delicious jam. (Image: Heike Rau / fotolia.com) An enrichment of the kitchen
Our ancestors used Cornelian cherries in many ways as food. So they mixed the dried leaves with sour cherry and strawberry leaves and cooked tea from it. The dried fruits were, similar to rosehips, a basis for hot drinks.
The fully ripe fruits can be frozen while retaining their high content of vitamin C. Juice, wine and liqueur, even schnapps are among the common products.
The fruits are suitable, dried or fresh, as a special spice for soups, but also for dishes with lamb and rice (in Iran and Turkey), for pastries and confectionery, for desserts, quark and yogurt.
Archaeologists suspect that the quantities of fruit in Neolithic stilt houses were used to make alcoholic beverages, which at the time were also thought to numb pain. Cornelian schnapps is known in Austria as "Dirndlbrand" and expensive.
The cornelian cherry in the garden
The fruits are robust. You can buy and plant the shrubs with root balls in autumn as well as in spring. For a rich harvest of the fruits they should get two plants, thus the pollination is assured. In addition, the bushes should be warm and sunny to produce many fruits.
The cornus does not need special fertilizer, in nature it grows on nutrient-poor soils. It is enough to store a compost layer in the spring.
Make sure that the cornelian cherry is not directly next to "strong competitors" such as birch or maple. The root system of the dogwood is fine and is displaced by stronger roots.
It needs a regular cut only at a young age, right after planting or directly after flowering. This serves to provide a uniform crown in the first few years. If the tree is mature, it does not need a cut to produce a rich crop.
You can easily remove branches from older plants and cut back the trunks to create a bed, for example, without affecting the plant.
The Cornelian cherry is not only suitable for hedges, but can also be an eye-catcher in the middle of the garden. As it grows slowly, big, but not too big, it is also suitable as a house tree for smaller backyards and urban plots. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
literature
Reinhard Witt: Wild bushes in nature and garden 1989