the.com/cherries
summer's tiny grenades, sweet enough to forgive how briefly they exist
means The small, round, red-to-dark stone fruits of certain trees, eaten fresh or cooked and prized for their sweet-tart flavor.
from From Old North French 'cherise,' which English speakers heard as a plural and trimmed back to a 'cherry' — the original 's' got mistaken for a plural marker and quietly vanished. The word traces back through Latin 'cerasum' to Greek 'kerasos,' the cherry tree, possibly named for the city of Kerasous on the Black Sea, whose region was famed for the fruit. So every bowl of cherries carries a faint, ancient echo of a coastal town.
- botanical kin
- close cousins of almonds, peaches, and plums
- toxic seeds
- pits contain cyanide-producing compounds when crushed
- short season
- fresh sweet cherries last only weeks each year
- stem flex
- some can knot stems with their tongue
- orchard math
- trees need cold winters to fruit at all
bing cherries — dark red sweet variety, originated in oregon in 1875
montmorency cherries — tart red variety, 90% of us tart cherry crop in michigan
rainier cherries — yellow-red sweet variety developed at washington state university in 1960