The other day I drove to the grocery store, opened the trunk to get out my shopping bags, and this cherry fell out.
At my boyfriend’s house, a couple of beautiful ornamental cherries overhang the parking area. And this little fruit availed itself of my 2012 Prius as a dispersal method.
I don’t think this was a very effective dispersal method. If the cherry had asked me, I would have recommended one of the birds or squirrels that roam around the branches; they at least might have dropped its pit onto some dirt.
On the other hand, my car did carry the cherry all the way out to the suburbs. It’s obviously not going to germinate in the Trader Joe’s parking lot, but the next rain – and we’ve had no shortage of rain in the mid-Atlantic this spring – could wash it downhill, a few hundred feet to the ravine where the Northwest Branch of the Anacostia River runs. That’s a good place for cherries – they bloom early in spring, explosions of pink and white among the tall gray trunks.
I was so taken with this hitchhiking drupe that not only did I not lock the car, but I failed to notice that I didn’t have my keys until I finished my shopping, got back to the car, and couldn’t find them in my purse or any of my pockets. So in addition to getting itself carried to the ‘burbs, this fruit could have gotten my car stolen. Huh.
Ok, cherry. You do you. You disperse any way you want. Thanks for choosing me as your ride.
Photo: Helen Fields, obviously