Cornus mas L.

The Cornel, or Cornelian Cherry, forms a large shrub or medium-sized tree that usually branches close to the ground to produce a dense crown, but is capable of being trained as a single-stem tree. The leaves – shining and elliptic with impressed veins – are preceded in late winter by a mass of bright yellow flowers, borne in spherical clusters from pairs of axillary buds, or from the terminal bud of the previous year’s short lateral shoots. Unforgettable when seen sunlit against the lying snow, as is often the case in central and eastern Europe, the flowering display is just as effective at enlivening the monochrome of a drab February day in Britain. The tree used to be specially prized by British gardeners for its early display, its position somewhat usurped by the Japanese Witch Hazels which became generally available in the latter decades of the nineteenth century (though it and C. officinalis remain very useful for winter display on calcareous soils). The flowers are a valuable early source of nectar and pollen for insects, including honey bees (Szot 2024). A large number of cultivars have been selected – mainly but not exclusively for their fruiting character – which we treat under entries headed Cornus mas Cultivars A–G, H–M, N–R, S–Z.

Cornus mas – the name translates as ‘male Cornus’ – is the type species of the genus, its curious binomial based on early-modern interpretations of Theophrastus, the third-century philosopher who first articulated the generic concept of Cornus in his Enquiry into plants (Book III, 12). Theophrastus divided the genus as then known into two kinds, his interpretation evidently based on the useable ‘timber’ (i.e. the straight growth) normally harvested from each: that of kraneia (C. mas) was hard and ideal for use as javelins, while the pithy, wandlike shoots of thelykraneia (‘female cornus’, C. sanguinea) were ‘useless for spears’. Indeed, the Cornel has been prized since antiquity for its hard timber and its straight growth when coppiced, making it ideal for use in the manufacture of bows and, above all, short throwing spears (Theophrastus measured the height of a typical Cornel in terms of the length of the long Macedonian spear of twelve cubits (5.5 m), though it is evident from his description that a weapon of this length could not have been fashioned from its timber). In more recent times, the wood has been used for tools and domestic items – cog-wheels, bobbins, pins and wedges (Evelyn 1670).

Cornus mas is native throughout western and southern Europe, north to Germany and westwards into Asia Minor and the Caucausus. The species commonly grows in association with Quercus, Carpinus and Ostrya as one of the diagnostic components of the thermophilous deciduous forest that covers a broad discontinuous swathe of the European continent just outside the Mediterranean zone, at higher altitudes in the south of its range (up to 1500 m asl), descending into the lowlands further northwards (Chytrý et al. 2025; Chytrý et al. 2025; Da Ronch et al. 2016). A species that requires light, C. mas grows at forest edges, and extends into open shrub habitats (Da Ronch et al. 2016). There is an exceptionally high degree of genetic diversity throughout the species’ extensive range – notably in Turkey, the Black Sea region, Georgia and Ukraine – a consequence of hundreds, if not thousands of years of human-assisted seed propagation (Pirc 2015; Ercýslý 2004).

Linnaeus (1753) specifically mentions that the species grew in hedges in Austria, and it is there that the species still maintains its Western European stronghold – above all in the province of Lower Austria, in the valleys of Pielach, Gölsen, and Triesting, between Klosterneuburg and Amstetten. Here the trees mark field lines between pasture allotments, and many individuals stand in open pastures, and at forest edges, usually with a southerly aspect, and often on steep terrain; the very high genetic diversity within these populations supports a native origin for these trees (Borroto Fernandez et al. 2023). In Austrian dialect the tree is known as the Dirndl, the Pielach Valley colloquially the ‘Dirndltal’.

In Europe, wild trees regularly exceed 100 years of age, and individuals of 200–300 years are not uncommon (Pirc 2015), such as the large specimen at Kraków Botanical Garden, Poland, planted c. 1790 and now with a spread of 11 m (Monumental Trees 2025). Elsewhere in central Europe, ancient, gnarled specimens may be found, such as the massive stool at Császló, Eastern Hungary with multiple trunks occupying an area 370 cm in circumference (measured 1.3 m above ground in 2009) (Dendromania 2025). There are claims of thousand-year-old trees surviving to the present (Pirc 2015), though such reports are unsupported; a putative (unidentified) millennial specimen figured by Laimer et al. (2021) looks like a mere stripling compared with the Császló tree.

Cornus mas is not native to Britain, but has been cultivated there since the mid sixteenth century. Contemporary marginalia in a trimmed copy of Dioscorides dating from 1543 (owned by the Wellcome institute) note that the tree was ‘Not knowen y[et] in Englande’, but William Turner claimed to have heard of one growing at Hampton Court around this time (Turner 1551). Fifty years later, Gerard (1597) reported the existence of specimens in the gardens ‘of such as love rare and dainty plants’ (including his own); and by 1735, Miller was able to describe it as ‘very common’ in English gardens. Henry Phillips (1823) recorded several fine, abundantly fruiting trees ‘the size of a moderate cherry or apple tree’ growing at Cowfold, Sussex.

The fruit has been exploited as a food source for millennia, charred stones found in mesolithic burial deposits along the Danube in Serbia dating from c. 6500 BC. Classical sources suggest that the fruit was not universally enjoyed: Homer recounts how, having changed Odysseus’s companions into pigs, Circe threw them mast, acorns, and the fruit of the cornel tree – ‘such things as wallowing swine are wont to feed upon’ (Odyssey, Book 10, 242, trans. A. T. Murray (1919)). In the northerly parts of the species’ range, where shorter summers result in rather astringent fruit with a lower sugar content, the berries have been treated as medicinal rather than comestible items, commended by de Renou (1657) for its ability ‘to stay the Belly-flux’, and by Gerard (1597) as ‘a remedy against the laske and bloudy flix’ (diarrhoea and dysentry). The fruits were taken in the form of a syrup known as rob de cornis or rob cornorum (Manardus 1540; College of Physicians 1618).

On the other hand, In Eastern Europe and Western Asia the fruit is an important component of many regional foods, including jams, sherbets, compotes and fruit-leathers (Pirc 2015). In Poland it is used to make a traditional Cornelian cherry liquor called Dereniówka liquor. In southwestern Poland the unripe fruits are fermented and preserved in brine as an olive substitute (‘Polish olives’) – the British writer Henry Phillips (1823) describes a similar usage, noting that it was recorded by Pliny eighteen hundred years previously. The fruits are high in vitamin C, polyphenols and antioxidants (Jurikova et al. 2025).

Over the last fifty years, the centre of research and development has been Ukraine, where during the 1960s the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences initiated a breeding programme – overseen in recent decades by Svetlana Klymenko – with the aim of developing cultivars that fruit regularly, producing larger fruits and improved yields. Wild plants generally bear in the region of 2.5–5 kg per tree, while crops of up to 80 kg can be obtained in cultivation (Klymenko 2004; Pirc 2015). The Ukrainian programme has produced a remarkable array of fruit morphologies and flavours, varieties also having been selected for ease of harvest (ripe fruits remaining on the tree rather than falling) and different ripening dates (the earliest varieties maturing in late July, the latest in October).

In Western Europe, the culinary use of cornelian cherries has been revived in recent decades by enthusiasts in France and Austria. André Gayraud’s guide to the genus (2013) includes a cordon bleu recipe section that features dishes such as ‘Crème brulée with duck foie gras and cornelian cherry jam’. At the Höhere Bundeslehr- und Forschungsanstalt Schönbrunn, Vienna, Helmut Pirc has overseen a systematic selection programme that has introduced numerous new cultivars, as well as testing and assessing those from further afield (Pirc 2015).

In the British Isles, where it is cultivated beyond the northern extent of its natural range, Cornus mas has been described as ‘shy-fruiting’ (Bean 1914), though it produces fruit in sufficient quantities to supplement the diet of enterprising foragers and grazing horticulturists, for whom the fruit is part of a rich autumnal smorgasbord. (For lay gardeners, Johnson and More (2004) caution against confusion with Lonicera maakii – superficially similar, with opposite leaves, but the red berries are toxic.) Trees in southeast England tend to fruit well, benefiting from the warmer summers; the fruit ripens as far north as Oslo (Da Ronch et al. 2016) and Trondheim (Barstow 2019). A high degree of self-incompatiblity has been demonstrated experimentally in C. mas (D’Amato 1947; Gunatilleke & Gunatilleke 1984), though this may vary within the species, since self-fertile cultivars (e.g. ‘Kazanlak’) are offered commercially; high yields depend on the proximity of more than one clone.

The vast genetic diversity across the species’ extensive range constantly throws up remarkable morphological and phenological variation – in habit, fruit colour, leaf colour, taste, biochemistry, and date of ripening. It is striking that early writers, from Gaspar Bauhin (1623) as late as Weston (1770), distinguished between wild and cultivated varieties of C. mas, the former recognised as having much greater variety in the appearance of the fruits. Duhamel (1755) listed five varieties, which he categorised as either Cornus sylvestris mas or Cornus hortensis mas; the cultivated forms were given the name ‘Acurnier’ in Provence (Duhamel du Monceau 1755).

By and large, the species has been untroubled by disease (Da Ronch et al. 2016), but a number of foliage disorders have been reported in recent years, mostly in commercial contexts where large numbers of young plants are grown in close proximity. Infection with Phytophthora citricola was identified in 2007–2008 in young plants of the ‘Kazanlaker’ cultivar grown in Bulgaria, causing leaf spots and necrosis spreading into woody tissues and killing the plant (Bobev, Van Poucke & Maes 2009). A form of anthracnose caused by Colletotrichum acutatum was identified in Iran and Hungary in 2011 (Tóth, Petróczy & Palkovics 2017), and a bacterial leaf blight caused by Pseudomonas syringae was discovered in Tennessee on imported plants in 1996 (Mmbaga & Sheng 2000), since found in a number of European countries. At present, none of these diseases have been reported in landscape settings, or in wild trees.

Cornus mas does not require pruning if grown as a shrub or multi-stem, though if a single-stem tree is desired then a leader will need to be selected and trained. The multiple stems produced by coppiced trees make substantial vertical growth – ideal for spears (of course), but also for long hoe handles (Gayraud 2013). The trees will bear even heavy pruning with equanimity, and are amenable to annual clipping as hedges, whether topiarised or trained (often pleached). Such shaping is best done earlier in the year, while the twigs are still pliable enough to be easily cut (LVE Baumschule 2025). Touring southern Germany in the autumn of 1828, J. C. Loudon visited the castle of Messkirch where he discovered ‘a labyrinth, the hedge of which consisted entirely of Cornus mas,’ laden with well tasting fruit (Loudon 1844).

Species in subgenus Cornus typically have very hard seed coats, necessitating pretreatment if seed has been stored. Most sources advise warm stratification (say, 15°C for 12–16 weeks) followed by cold stratification (4°C for a similar period), in advance of early spring sowing (Gosling 2007). With respect to the propagation of clonal cultivars, Ukrainian studies found high success rates in budding (90–98% success) and establishing offsets (85–90% success), with grafting also feasible (75–78% success) (Klimenko 2004). Soft- and hardwood cuttings can be rooted with IBA (Cappiello & Shadow 2005). Anecdotal data suggests that the readiness of cuttings to strike may vary across the species: a study of Greek wild-collected material from a variety of geographically distinct populations found that propensity to root varied according to genotype (Karapatzak et al. 2022). Efforts have been made to establish a micropropagation protocol for the conservation of ancient trees (Laimer et al. 2021).

The wide distribution of Cornus mas is doubtless attributable to the remarkably broad environmental tolerances and range of ecotypes found within the species as a whole. Wild plants favour – but are not not restricted to – well-drained calcareous forest soils (Da Ronch et al. 2016), and the dry conditions and porous soils typical of higher elevations, but they will grow well on clay. From a production perspective, the species fruits most heavily when provided with moisture at the root, but it is tolerant of both drought and heat. And though the trees thrive best in open positions with high light levels, they perform more than adequately in partial shade.