Cerasus serrula Seeds | Paperbark Cherry
LATIN NAME: Cerasus serrula
COMMON NAME: Paperbark Cherry
Plant Profile
The paperbark cherry is grown for its skin, not its fruit. In maturity the trunk and branches shed thin, glossy sheets of bark in copper and mahogany tones that catch low winter light, so the tree earns its place in the garden long after the leaves fall. No other cherry peels so cleanly or glows so warmly on a grey day, and that bark is the reason the species sits in arboreta from Boston to Beijing. A young tree shows the start of the display within a few seasons, so the wait is not long.
The plant entered Western gardens through the plant hunters who worked the Sichuan and Yunnan valleys in the early twentieth century, gathering seed from high, open woodland. Those wild collections are the stock behind most garden trees, and the species name still points to the Chinese mountains where it was first secured. The same collectors moved many Asian cherries west, but the paperbark is the one remembered for its trunk above all.
Planted as a lone specimen it gives white spring blossom, summer green, autumn colour and a glowing winter trunk, which is a full year of reason to plant it. It also trains well as a small bonsai where the bark reads at hand height, and the slender twigs make a pleasing winter silhouette in a shallow pot.
The slender twig and fine bark suit a small bonsai, and the sour little cherries can be cooked into a sharp jelly though they are hardly a dessert fruit. Most growers value the branch structure and the trunk far above the crop, and a well-trained specimen shows the peeling bark to best effect. The fruit is best left for the birds, which flock to it in early autumn.
Science & Biotechnology
The peeling bark is rich in tannins and coloured by condensed phenolics, the same class of compound that protects the trunk from drying and attack. Modern work on the Prunus genome gives breeders a map for bark colour and cold tolerance across the whole cherry and plum group, and the paperbark is a useful wild relative for that research because its bark trait is so distinctive.
The bark splits in thin horizontal sheets rather than vertical strips, and the fresh layer beneath is a brighter red before it dulls with age. This periderm behaviour is genetic and steady, so a young tree shows the start of the display within a few seasons of growth. Lenticels on the bark let the trunk breathe even as the outer sheets curl away.
Selection in botanic gardens favours trees with the smoothest, most reflective bark and the tightest form, because the winter show is the selling point. Crosses within Cerasus aim to hold the bark trait while improving cold hardiness for northern sites, and a few named selections now carry the copper colour more reliably than seedling trees.
Uses & Benefits
The leaves are narrow, lance-shaped and neatly toothed, turning gold and orange in the cold season, and the spring carries small white five-petalled flowers in loose groups. The fruit is a tiny dark cherry, ornamental rather than a crop, and the birds take it quickly once it softens. The fine leaf and the polished bark together give the tree a refined, almost graphic outline against the sky.
Growing from Seed
In the open garden the tree is deer-resistant once established, and a light prune after the leaf drop keeps the branchwork open and the trunk visible through winter. The autumn colour comes from carotenoids and a little anthocyanin in the leaf, and a site with cold nights deepens the gold. Avoid a rich nitrogen feed late in the year, which only pushes soft growth that the frost catches. A mulch of bark chip at the base conserves moisture through a dry summer and shows off the peeling bark to best effect.
The seed carries a rest period and is best sown fresh into a cold frame in autumn so it meets the cold and then pushes a shoot when warmth returns. A warm, dry sowing box gives poor results because the embryo waits for winter chill, and the hard stone needs the slow moist period to soften before a root forms.
Move seedlings to individual pots once they stand about ten centimetres tall, and grow them on in full light with steady water. Thin crowded rows early so each whip keeps a straight leader, and protect the young bark from string and rub damage. A light winter mulch over the first cold season helps the small root system establish before the next growth flush.
Our Take
I grow paperbark cherry for the trunk alone, and it out-shines every flowering cherry once the leaves are gone. Near it I like Cerasus serrulata for blossom and Prunus pseudocerasus for early fruit, with Prunus cerasoides as a Himalaya cousin.
Related Reading
More species in the same orbit as Paperbark Cherry: