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Tree growing guide
Spanish cherry, also called bakul or maulsari, grows easily from fresh seed. Clean off the pulp, never let the seed dry out completely, and expect seedlings over two to twelve weeks.
Pick fruits as they turn orange-red. Each holds one or two (rarely up to five) shiny dark brown seeds, about 1.1-1.5 cm long, in yellow pulp. Rub off the pulp, rinse and sow soon. If you must store seed briefly, keep it in a cool place, never in the freezer and never dried hard: seed dried below about 8-12% moisture or kept dry at 5 °C or colder loses viability.
Do not crack or file the seed. In an Indian trial, mechanically breaking the seed coat gave the lowest germination of all treatments.
Not needed. Bakul is a tropical tree, and cold storage damages the seed.
Recommended. In the same trial a hot-water treatment gave significantly higher germination than other simple methods. Pour hot, not boiling, water over the cleaned seed, let it cool and soak, then sow.
Sow in the warm season. Bakul grows in tropical monsoon and coastal climates; in most of India sow outdoors from the hot season into the rains, and in cooler climates use a warm propagator.
Cover the seed with a layer of mix about as thick as the seed.
Use a free-draining mix of soil, sand and compost in polybags or a raised nursery bed.
Keep the mix evenly moist. Do not let the seed dry out between watering, and avoid waterlogging.
Light is not needed for germination. Keep the beds in light shade.
The first seedlings can appear in about 16-17 days, but others take up to 82-88 days, so keep the beds moist for three months. Germination is epigeal: the seed leaves rise above the soil.
If sown in a bed, move seedlings into individual bags once they have a few true leaves, keeping the root ball intact.
Young stems and buds are covered in rusty brown hairs, which is normal. Harden plants in fuller sun before planting out.
Plant in the rainy season in full sun. Allow for a tree up to 15 m tall with a crown up to 10 m wide; growth is moderate.
Bakul is widely planted along roads and in parks and coastal sites. It needs full sun and moderate watering once established.
The small cream flowers are fragrant; in India they are used for adornment and to distil scented water.
The ripe orange fruit has edible yellow flesh around the seed.
Stem cuttings are an alternative when you want a copy of a particular tree.
Sow Spanish cherry seed fresh after a hot-water soak and keep it moist until the seedlings appear.
No. Spanish cherry (Mimusops elengi) belongs to the sapodilla family, Sapotaceae. Fruit cherries are Prunus in the rose family.
From about two weeks to nearly three months. Keep the seed moist and warm the whole time.
No. Dry seed kept at 5 °C or colder lost viability in storage trials. Sow it fresh.