Prunus grayana is a species of cherry

Cherry

The cherry is the fruit of many plants of the genus Prunus, and is a fleshy stone fruit. The cherry fruits of commerce are usually obtained from a limited number of species, including especially cultivars of the wild cherry, Prunus avium....

 native to Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 and China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, occurring at medium altitudes of 1,000–3,800 m in the temperate

Temperate

In geography, temperate or tepid latitudes of the globe lie between the tropics and the polar circles. The changes in these regions between summer and winter are generally relatively moderate, rather than extreme hot or cold...

 zone. It prefers sunshine and moist (but drained) soil.

It is a small deciduous

Deciduous

Deciduous means "falling off at maturity" or "tending to fall off", and is typically used in reference to trees or shrubs that lose their leaves seasonally, and to the shedding of other plant structures such as petals after flowering or fruit when ripe...

 tree

Tree

A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...

 reaching a height of 8–20 m. The trunk is slender with smooth grey to purple-grey bark

Bark

Bark is the outermost layers of stems and roots of woody plants. Plants with bark include trees, woody vines and shrubs. Bark refers to all the tissues outside of the vascular cambium and is a nontechnical term. It overlays the wood and consists of the inner bark and the outer bark. The inner...

 marked with horizontal brown lenticel

Lenticel

A lenticel is an airy aggregation of cells within the structural surfaces of the stems, roots, and other parts of vascular plants. It functions as a pore, providing a medium for the direct exchange of gasses between the internal tissues and atmosphere, thereby bypassing the periderm, which would...

s, with a strong smell when cut. The leaves

Leaf

A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....

 are elliptical to ovoid, 4–10 cm long and 1.8–4.5 cm broad, with a serrated margin with aristate

Leaf shape

In botany, leaf shape is characterised with the following terms :* Acicular : Slender and pointed, needle-like* Acuminate : Tapering to a long point...

 tips to the serrations. The lowest teeth of a leaf feature two glands. The flower

Flower

A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs...

s are produced on 5–8 cm long raceme

Raceme

A raceme is a type of inflorescence that is unbranched and indeterminate and bears pedicellate flowers — flowers having short floral stalks called pedicels — along the axis. In botany, axis means a shoot, in this case one bearing the flowers. In a raceme, the oldest flowers are borne...

s, each flower 7–10 mm diameter, with five white petals; they are hermaphroditic, and appear in mid-spring after the leaves. The fruit

Fruit

In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...

 is a small drupe

Drupe

In botany, a drupe is a fruit in which an outer fleshy part surrounds a shell of hardened endocarp with a seed inside. These fruits develop from a single carpel, and mostly from flowers with superior ovaries...

, about 8 mm in diameter, green at first, then red and finally ripening black in mid summer.

It is very closely related to Prunus padus (Bird cherry), differing in the aristate tips to the leaf serration (blunt-pointed in P. padus), and the longer style in the flower.

Uses

The flowers, fruit and seed are all edible and are prepared and eaten in Japan. The fruit can be preserved with salt to make a dish called Anningo. The bark and roots are the source of a green dye. The wood is very hard and fissable. It is used in various cabinet

Cabinet (furniture)

A cabinet is usually a box-shaped piece of furniture with doors or drawers for storing miscellaneous items. Some cabinets stand alone while others are built into a wall or are attached to it like a medicine cabinet. Cabinets are typically made of wood or, now increasingly, of synthetic...

-making and various other ornamental applications.

Classification

The taxon was described in 1864 by Miquel

Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel

Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel was a Dutch botanist.He was head of the botanical gardens at Rotterdam , Amsterdam and Utrecht . He directed the Rijksherbarium at Leiden from 1862...

 as Prunus padus var. japonica, on the basis of specimens collected by Siebold

Philipp Franz von Siebold

Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold was a German physician and traveller. He was the first European to teach Western medicine in Japan...

. After a review of the previous literature, Maximowicz in St. Petersburg decided in 1883 the tree was a distinct species, and named it Prunus grayana after Asa Gray

Asa Gray

-References:*Asa Gray. Dictionary of American Biography. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928–1936.*Asa Gray. Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.*Asa Gray. Plant Sciences. 4 vols. Macmillan Reference USA, 2001....

.