Cerasus avium
Cerasus avium
Kiraz
Tree up to 25 m; young shoots stout, glabrous. Stipules deciduous. Leaves ovate or obovate-oblong to elliptic, up to 160 x 80 mm, unequally, singly or doubly serrate, at first brownish and ± pilose beneath, becoming green and glabrous or with tufts of hairs restricted to the lower sides of the nerves; petioles up to 50 mm. Flowers 2-5 in umbels which lack subtending leaves; scales of involucre reflexed; pedicels 30-60 mm; hypanthium campanulate; petals white, 12-15 mm. Drupe subglobose, in wild forms c. 1 cm in diam., red to almost black, lustrous, with a bitter or sweet juicy flesh; stone ovoid or globose, smooth. Fl. 3-5. In mixed forest up to 1600 m. Widely cultivated and sometimes escaping.
C. & S. Europe, Caucasia, N.W. Iran. Long cultivated for its fruit so that it is now difficult to distinguish between truly wild and naturalized populations. It is apparently native, however, in parts of N. Turkey.
