Wild cherry (Bird Cherry) is also known as Gean in Scotland or Mazzard (also 'massard'), both largely obsolete names in modern English, though more recently 'Mazzard' has been used to refer to a selected self-fertile cultivar that comes true from seed, and which is used as a seedling rootstock for fruiting cultivars. The name "wild cherry" has also been applied in a general or colloquial sense to other species of Prunus growing in their native habitats, particularly to Black Cherry Prunus serotina. Literally,. the scientific name Prunis avium means "bird cherry", which as a common name typically refers to P. padus though.
Along side the bird cherry one of the remaining Beech trees on the Barony Road to Newburgh is just coming into leaf. A colossal specimen well over 100 years old, over the 30 years of my time here many contemporary ones have perished in the equinox gales. The timber has provided plenty of fuel for my wood burning stove though I would have preferred it to have been slabbed with a band saw, providing excellent household fittings, work surfaces and the like.
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