Cherries

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Frequently Asked Questions

Sweet cherries as we know them today originated in Asia Minor, between the Caspian and the Black Sea, and what is now Georgia and Armenia. The earliest known reference to cherries is in the History of Plants by the Greek Philosopher Theophrastus, who lived between 3071 - 2087 BC.

How cherries travelled to Asia Minor to Europe remains a mystery, but the common belief is that birds carried them between the continents. Then Colonisers took cherries to the United States by ship in the 1600's.

The answer to that depends on what moment in history you are looking at. For example, medieval art and literature imputed cherries with a sacred significance. It was lauded in the Cherry Tree Carol, a Christmas ballad sung as early as the 15th century. 

In the medieval chivalric romance Sir Cleges, it tells a story of a poor knight who prays beneath a tree, asking that he and his family attain wealth. When he looks up the tree, it is covered in cherries - a miracle. It portends good things to come and he and his son take the cherries to the King who, out of gratitude for this miraculous gift provides them with wealth and means. 

As the years progress, cherries took on a more secular meaning, being associated with romance and sex. Writers viewed cherries as ripe, full and waiting to burst - all appropriate euphemisms for eroticism.

In early Christian text, cherries' spiritual meaning centres primarily on the miraculous and divine. The fruit often grows or appears in unlikely circumstances serving evidence of Gods wondrousness and glory. 

The spiritual significance here is that with God, all things are possible as shown when a cherry tree bends to allow its fruit to be picked.

Cherries appear throughout works of visual art, including in paintings and embroideries. They typically represent good fortune, celestial wealth and the fruits of paradise. In some paintings, they are the focal point of the entire picture. In others, they dangle discreetly from the subjects’ hand or as in the case of the famous painting of Elizabeth I from the ears.

Cherries feature in varying degrees in a number of famous paintings including, ‘The Cherry Gathers’, 1786 by Francois Boucher, ‘Girl under the Cherry Blossoms’, by Emile Vernon, ‘Madonna with Cherries’, 1518 by Titian Vecelli, and the ‘Boy
with Cherries’, 1874 by Edouard Manet.  

According to the Mayo Clinic, it takes 47 hours for food to be digested by women and 33 hours for men.