What is Cherry?

Cherries are actually classified as a type of fruit called a drupe. Drupes consist of thin
skin, a fleshy body, a hard stone, and an inner seed. They’re often referred to as “stone
fruits” due to the hard stone in the middle. The part of the fruit that you eat is called the
mesocarp. It features a juicy and sweet taste to encourage animals to eat the fruit and
spread the seeds.
The defining factor of a drupe, the stone or endocarp, is designed to be nearly
impenetrable to protect the seed inside. When the seed lands in good quality dirt with
plenty of sunlight and rain, the seeds sprouts and cracks the stone, allowing a new plant
to form. The seeds of stone fruits also contain a poison, so it’s important to never eat
large quantities of stone fruit seeds. They contain a chemical called amygdalin, which
breaks down into hydrogen cyanide when ingested. However, you’d have to eat many
stone fruit seeds to make you sick.
Some common stone fruits include peaches, nectarines, plums, dates, mangoes, and
apricots. Surprisingly, nuts like walnuts, almonds, and even coconuts are also
considered drupes. Raspberries and blackberries are also technically classified as
drupes due to their crunchy seeds in the middle. Due to the fact that they grow as a
cluster of tiny drupes grouped closely together, they’re also classified as aggregate
fruits.
Cherries are small stone fruits, which means they have a pit or seed inside. They grow
in several colors and flavors, but they're considered either sweet or sour. Sweet cherries
are juicy and have a lower acid content than sour cherries, which are much more tart.
Michigan grows most of the sour cherries in the U.S. while Washington, California, and
Oregon grow 90% of the sweet cherries.
Cherries thrive in most temperate regions, so they're harvested throughout the year. In
the Northern Hemisphere, cherry trees blossom around April and produce fruits from
June to August. In the Southern Hemisphere, cherries are a winter holiday fruit.
No matter where they're grown, cherries can be a tasty, healthy addition to a well-
rounded diet.
Thanks to Louis XV, who especially appreciated this fruit, he is owed the optimization
and intensive cultivation of the modern cherry tree in France. The fruits of the wild
cherry are the same dark red as the cherries of our markets. When ripe, they have a
sweet pulp that can be bitter without being acidic.