Jan Sniadecki was one of the Enlightenment's great Polish polymaths, an astronomer and mathematician who reformed how Krakow's university taught science, and tradition credits him with personally p...
Photo: Janusz Krzyzek (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Cornelian Cherry
Cornus mas
The cornelian cherry usually spends its life as a shrub, so the old ones that grew into trees are worth seeking out, and they announce themselves early: small yellow flowers on bare branches in February and March, before almost anything else wakes up, then sour scarlet fruit in late summer that Czech and Polish kitchens still turn into jam, syrup and liqueur. We map 3 of them, in 3 cities.
In Krakow's Botanical Garden, tradition credits the astronomer Jan Sniadecki with planting the row along the main path around 1790. At Zlatá Koruna in southern Bohemia, the monastery says its tree still remembers the Cistercians, which puts it there before the abbey was dissolved in 1785. Graz protects one on the Johannhöhe ridge whose register entry gives a species and an owner and nothing else; the newest proof it stands is a 2015 photograph of its crown in flower.
Krakow
Cesky Krumlov
A cornelian cherry usually spends its life as a shrub.
Photo: Anaj7 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Graz
The only photograph on record of this tree shows no trunk at all.
Explore by city: Krakow · Cesky Krumlov · Graz · Prague · Brussels · Porto · Brisbane · Munich · every city · or browse all species.