Yellow Spanish Bigerreau
Yellow Spanish
The Yellow Spanish is the oldest surviving variety of the Bigerreau family of sweet cherries that once dominated the orchards of France and Spain. There were two ancient categories of cherry in Europe, the soft-bodied guignes cherries, and the crisp body bigerreau cherries. The Yellow Spanish was the Bigerreau Commun, the most popular cherry in France during the 1600s. The earliest descriptions speak of a white fleshed cherry sporting a red blush; the English orchardists at Kensington gardens saw the base skin as yellow, not white; and the interior flesh as Yellow. In the 1710s they translated the variety as “Yellow Spanish” (France was then the chief enemy of England, so French nativity was ignored.) The variety came to Central America with Spanish colonizers in the seventeenth century. In the United States William Prince of Flushing, New York, imported the fruit in 1802 and promoted in assiduously in the following decades. [William Prince, A Short Treatise on Horticulture (New York, 1828), 28].
Other bigerreau (firm, sweet) cherries that have influenced American pomology: the Napoleon Bigerreau became Oregon’s vaunted Royal Anne Cherry. It has a more pronounced acid component than the Yellow Spanish. The Van cherries of Canada and the Rainier Cherry of the Pacific Northwest are latter day offspring of the bigerreau family.
This heart shaped large white-yellow cherry with a rosy cheek became a by word for sweetness among light skinned fruits. Visually beautiful, firm fleshed and delicious, this cherry ripened in late June or early July and enjoyed brisk sales at produce markets. Yet its tendency to rot immediately upon ripening made it less than ideal produce. Throughout the 1800s breeders tweaked the variety attempting to preserve the sweetness, firmness, size, profusion, and visual splendor, of the original, but imbuing it with resistence to canker and rotting. Offspring of the Yellow Spanish began appearing at American nurseries—the Napoleon, the Florence, Schmidt’s. Often these varieties presented a different balance of acid and sugar. Because the original had provided the standard for sweet yet firm cherries, it lived on in the hearts and orchards of cherry traditionalists. It became a fixture in breeding programs, and maintains a presence in the USDA’s stone fruit collection . http://www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/acc/display.pl?1001617 .
The following characterization of its taste appeared in multiple southern nursery catalogues at the turn of the twentieth century: “fine, rich flavor. This variety, though not of the highest excellence, has become, from its great size, beauty, and productiveness, a great favorite.” [Franklin Davis, Richmond Commercial Nurseries 1869. W. T. Hood Descriptive Catalogue 1907. ] Because the name Bigarreau came to designate the category of fruit bred from the original, the designation “Yellow Spanish” came to be used when referring to the ancestor by nurserymen.
There is a nursery company in the United States that maintains the Spanish Yellow: The Arboreum Company of California. Be forewarned: it is a famous company among cultivators or rare varieties, and its yearly stock is sold out in hours after availability is announced. Nevertheless, here is the link: https://arboreumco.com/collections/cherries
Illustration: A A Newton, “Yellow Spanish,” USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection, National Agricultural Library Special Collections, Beltsville MD