Mahaleb cherry

Between aromas and perfumes 🌳🌸
Mahaleb cherry, also called St Lucie cherry (Prunus mahaleb) flowers in late April. It is a non-thorny, highly branched shrub that reaches 2 to 5 meters, sometimes even more.
The white flowers with 5 petals 🌸, very fragrant, are arranged in a corymbose inflorescence and are visited by bees 🐝 who obtain a fine honey 🍯.
The pea-sized fruits are first yellow, then red and finally black when ripe. They are very bitter and sour, they are not edible for humans but are sought after by birds.
The mahaleb cherry thrives well on arid and calcareous soils, it is often a pioneer species on stony soils.
⁉️ Did you know? 😲
The wood, hard and very fragrant, was once used to make pipes. In addition, the plant contains coumarin, a substance used to perfume tobacco.
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Photo Rasbak, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons