cherry laurel begins

Cherry Laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) just coming into flower, on March 21st 2014. (On the same day I also saw the first flowers of Wild Cherry (P. avium) and Sargent Cherry (P. sargentii).)

Cherry Laurels can be fairly big but are never trees, because they have no main trunk. I feel quite a close connection with them; most of the secret camps of my childhood games were within the crowns of what I then referred to as "laurel bushes". They have a sort of room-like interior, a bit gloomy but mostly dry and with bare clay floors. This dryness is why cherry-laurels are favoured by gamekeepers; they are ideal for sheltering pheasants.

They come from the Caucasus/Black Sea regions, originally. However in the UK they were very widely planted as screening and game-cover and are a typical feature of secondary woodland, spreading invasively after a slow start (apparently introduced in 1576, but not recorded as wild until 1886 - much of the spread has come in the last fifty years).

The wood is very heavy and dense. It feels like a great wood for carving, but apparently this is not so; it contains too much water and cracks when seasoned. It is good firewood. There are cyanides in the fresh leaves and fruit-pips, and these can cause painful headaches (often next day). In the good old days, junior entomologists used the crushed leaves in killing-jars. According to Monty Don, the water that drips off the leaves poisons those few plants that might otherwise tolerate the shade. Distillation of the leaves produces "cherry-laurel water" which in the eighteenth-century was a popular food-flavouring (because it smells like almonds). But you were supposed to dilute it. People who didn't dilute it died of prussic acid poisoning. Once this fact had become well established cherry-laurel water fell out of use as a food flavouring but started up a new career in the murder and suicide line.

Ripe fruits of Prunus laurocerasus. Frome, 11 August 2022.

Five months later the fruit is fully ripe. Perhaps because of Cherry Laurel's murderous reputation, it's difficult to find anyone who will confidently pronounce on the safety of eating the "cherries". I suspect they're safe to eat, if you don't crunch up the stone (but you're not going to, are you?).

The flesh is sweet and luscious. All the same, eating a "cherry" wasn't a completely joyous experience. It seemed to me there was a bitter undertaste, even peppery, and it dried my mouth up afterwards. Possibly anxiety played a part.

Anyway, I've made a mental note of Cherry Laurel fruit as potential survival food. Happily, even post-apocalypse, it's difficult to imagine a scenario where I'd need to rely on it, at a time of year when apples are ripe and the hedges are full of blackberries!

Pavement beside Cherry Laurel. Frome, 22 August 2022.