Landkey is noted for its variety of sweet cherry called Mazzard fruit which was discovered by local farmers in the early 1800s. Landkey Parish Council have rescued Mazzard trees from the brink of extinction; they were once common in North Devon, but had almost died out. The parish council won a £35,000 matching grant through the Countryside Agency's Millennium Green project to pave the way for creating a orchard as part of a wider Millennium Green project. All the 2 ft-high saplings were bought from Thornhayes Nursery at Cullompton, who also grafted the mazzard buds onto infant trees.
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Linnaeus, C. (1755). Flora Suecica, ed. 2: 165. Sweet cherry was known historically as gean or mazzard (also 'massard'), until recently, both were largely obsolete names in modern English.
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A newer rootstock, "Gisela 5", is slowly becoming available to gardeners and produces a tree 20% smaller than "Colt" and 45% smaller than "Mahaleb" and "Mazzard", making netting for bird protection much easier. Furthermore, German Nurseries Consortium (Consortium Deutscher Baumschulen — CDB®) is introducing across the EU their newest most dwarfing "Gisela 3" cherry rootstock that has 50% dwarfing qualities in comparison with "Mahaleb" and "Mazzard" and is 10% smaller still than "Gisela 5" rootstock.
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Reisen was usually known in England as 'Christian' and 'Christian's mazzard' was a joke among his friends. Sir James Thornhill drew an extempore profile of him, and Matthew Prior added the distich: > This, drawn by candle light and hazard, Was meant to show Charles > Christian's mazzard. A portrait of Reisen was painted by John Vanderbank, and was engraved by Freeman in Walpole's 'Anecdotes'. Other engravings by Bretherton and G. White are mentioned by Henry Bromley.
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'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.Huxley, A., ed. (1992). New RHS Dictionary of Gardening. Macmillan .
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Trees infected with Mahaleb rootstock die by late summer or early the following year. When Cherries are grafted onto Colt, Mazzard, or Stockton Morello rootstocks, there is a different range of symptoms. Affected leaves are smaller than normal and the foliage may be sparse. Dieback of shoot tips is common as the disease progresses.
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The branch may lose its older leaves, and the leaves tend to be smaller with a bronzed complexion. The rootstock that the cherry is grafted onto can play a significant role in the disease symptoms seen. Rootstocks of Mahaleb cherry exhibit different symptoms from stocks of Colt, Mazzard, or Stockton Morello. When the scion is grafted onto Mahaleb, symptoms consistent with Phytophthora root rot can be seen.
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The rootstock or stock plant may be cut off above the bud at budding, or one may wait until it is certain that the bud is growing. Fruit tree budding is done when the bark "slips," i.e. the cambium is moist and actively growing. Rootstocks are young trees, either seedlings as Mazzard cherries for many cherry varieties, or clonal rootstocks (usually propagated by layering) when one wants highly consistent plants with well defined characteristics.
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The standard root stock for the 'Rainier' cherry is the Mazzard cherry, a wild or seedling sweet cherry used as grafting stock. Mature 'Rainiers' reach a height of 30 to 35 feet and are widely adaptable to a variety of soil types. Trees should be well spaced to provide maximum sun exposure for individual branches, ensuring fully developed, sweet, ripe fruit at harvest time. 'Rainiers' will produce fruit in 3 to 5 years, with a bloom period in early April.
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Hand picking is also widely used for sweet as well as sour cherries to harvest the fruit to avoid damage to both fruit and trees. Common rootstocks include Mazzard, Mahaleb, Colt, and Gisela Series, a dwarfing rootstock that produces trees significantly smaller than others, only 8 to 10 feet (2.5 to 3 meters) tall. Sour cherries require no pollenizer, while few sweet varieties are self-fertile. A cherry tree will take three to four years once it is planted in the orchard to produce its first crop of fruit, and seven years to attain full maturity.
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Until the 1970s, cherries were grown on the vigorous "Malling F12/1", "Mazzard" (Prunus avium), or "Maheleb" (P. maheleb) rootstocks, which required much space and time before cropping began, thus the growing of cherries was not a realistic option on a garden scale. The introduction of the rootstock "Colt" enabled trees reaching a maximum height of to be grown, and if trained as a pyramid it is possible to restrict growth to about .Hessayon, Dr. D. G., The Fruit Expert, Transworld Publishers Ltd, 1997, p37 The popular sweet variety "Stella" can even be successfully grown in a pot on the patio when grafted onto a "Colt" rootstock.
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