CHERRIES (PRUNUS)

The first evidence of cherry as a food source dates back to 4–5,000 B.C. (Kolesnikova, 1975). In the centuries to follow, the evolution and domestication of cherry was influenced by both natural and human selection.
By the time of the Roman Empire, cherries were popular as garden trees and roadside trees in eastern Europe and western Russia.
Subsequently, different ecotypes, landraces, and local varieties of cherries developed.
These local selections proved to be extremely important in the pedigrees of the presently grown cultivars.
In almost every instance, the cherry cultivars grown today are either old local cultivars or no more than one generation removed from a local cultivar.

The first written record of cherry is by Theophrastus in his history of plants written about 300 B.C. (Hedrick, 1915); however, it is likely that the cherry had been domesticated several centuries earlier in Asia Minor and Greece.
Records of cultivated sweet cherry from Greece suggest that it was grown not only for fruit, but also as a timber tree.
Cultivated forms of cherry spread throughout the Roman Empire, extending the western boundary to England.
In the first century, A.D., Pliny, a Roman writer, described types of sweet, sour and ground cherry which grew wild in parts of Italy.

Genetic Resources of Temperate Fruit and Nut Crops

A. Iezzoni, H. Schmidt, A. Albertini

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1991.290.4