Montmorency Cherry
Montmorency is the most popular sour cherry grown in North America. Tart cherries like Montmorency have been extensively studied for many positive health benefits, and there is an enormous market around them. Perhaps the most common use is for pies, but they're also juiced, and featured in a range of savoury culinary uses.
Montmorency cherries are tart (and delicious) when eaten out of hand, and have red skin and clear flesh. They ripen late July.
Pollination: Self-fertile. Unlike some other sour cherries, Montmorency is able to cross-pollinate sweet cherry varieties as well as sour cherries.
Parentage: Going back about 1.6 million years, tart cherries are hybrids of Prunus fruticosa, the European dwarf cherry, and Prunus avium, the sweet cherry. Its more recent parentage is unknown - it was discovered as a seedling near Montmorency, France, in the 1600s.
Rootstock: Krymsk 6.
References:
Recommended cherry cultivars from OMAFRA.
Washington State University: Pollination - Sweet Cherry.
Image 1: Leif Kurth.
