Roundel

Roundel

Regular price $32.00 Sale

A variety perhaps as old as the cherry itself. Roundel received its name as the only truly round-fruited sweet cherry, and it remains the prototype cherry of slot machine and coughdrop packet. Bunyard declared it "a very fine fruit" and admitted it had an origin too remote from his own researches. Probably arrived in Britain in the 1600s from the Continent, where its trail is lost - it is figured as 'Tondella' in the 1699 oil painting by Bartolomeo Bimbi of cherries grown at the Medici court at Villa di Castello, Tuscany. Fruits are dark purplish red, never black, mirror-like finish, with a characteristic pale red stripe on the suture, which is flattened. A guigne, flesh dark, melting, juicy, aromatic, outstanding. Late June. On Mazzard.