DIY Flower Seed Cards From Cherry Tree Resin Gum (Kirschgummi)

Flower cards? The last time when we were making "guerilla gardening seed bombs" from clay and flower seeds we found out that the clay from the bombs, once thrown to somewhere, needed a lot of time and water to decay and to let the seeds fall into earth.

So I was thinking about other possibilities handling the smaller and bigger seeds in a good way and having something as a present for children and adults as well! It should be something water soluble holding the seeds, that are sticking onto or into it.

But what is cherry tree resin? It is not actually resin in the usual sense, as these fruit trees belong to the rose family (Rosaceae).
Cherry trees have a smooth bark with transverse lines. When the tree is older, it has large, longitudinal furrows.

It is the gum resin that emerges from the trunk after injury. The sour cherry (Prunus cerasus) in particular secretes this resin / gum / rubber in abundance. When the cherry tree is too damp, this cherry gum is very common on the trunks and branches.

It is also called cherry gold, fool's gold, prunoid gum. In our region we call it "cherry gum".

When it is dry, it looks like amber, becomes very hard and sticks no longer. Cherry gum has the property that it dissolves in water, which is why it does not stick to your hands when you wash them after the harvest or the harvesting knife or spoon is not so smeared because it is easy to clean. When harvesting cherry gum take care of not making a new injury to the cherry tree. Better leave some gum behind on the tree.

It is not flammable (compared to conifer resin). Normally it can't be used as an adhesive because it's water-soluble but, in this case, we'll use it because it has exact this feature. It is a soluble in water and has an antibacterial, fungicidal and antiviral effect. As far as I found out, possible uses of cherry gum are:

• Usage as an cough suppressant / expectorant in naturopathy
• It has a diuretic effect
• Dissolved in vinegar, as an anti-dandruff (hair wash) medium
• As an incense or additive for these uses
• Cherry tree resin can be sucked several times a day in pea sizes (or larger if you like it)
• Because it is water-soluble, it can be dissolved in water as well as tea, vinegar and other water-based liquids.
• Due to its diuretic effect it's being dissolved in wine in naturopathy and applied against bladder stones.
• The already hardened cherry tree resin can be ground or crushed into powder, which is also used as incense, especially by adding herbs or other smoking resins. Because it has no odor of its own, cherry gum should be smoked with other fragrant resins or herbs, such as sage, ginger and / or rose petals. It ensures peace and relaxation.
• Other applications for it are similar to gum arabic (from Acacia species)
• In the textile industry as a finishing agent.
• To make a healthy fool's gold wine you can put a little cherry gum, a cinnamon bark, a few cherries, a sliced vanilla pod, some cherry juice and some honey in a large glass. Pour dry red wine over it and put it on the windowsill for about three weeks. Pour everything through a sieve. You can throw away the spices; the cherries are wonderful for dessert. You can drink the wine against bladder stones, as an expectorant against coughs or just as it is - it tastes wonderful!

It contains D-glucuronic acid, D-galactopyranose, L-arabofuranose, D-xylopyranose, D-mannopyranose. All of these but the first one are kinds of sugar.

Supplies

You'll need...

... to harvest cherry gum:

• old stable knife and / or spoon
• bag
• sticking plaster (in the worst case)

... to dissolve the cherry gum:

• cooker or firepit
• pot
• glass to put inside the pot
• mortar and pestle or hammer and towel
• some water to put inside the pot
• little water for dissolving the cherry gum
• whisk or spoon for stirring

... for putting the cherry gum and the flower seeds together:

• coffee filter bag or coffee pod from Senseo machine (underlay to put the cherry gum and the seed on) and / or
• paper towel
• wooden spatula
• plastic wrap / sheet
• flower seeds
• scissors

Step 1: Crushing the Cherry Gum Pieces

Your cherry gum pieces are probably quite large. That's why you should crush 'em beforehand to let 'em dissolve more quickly later.

This works easy with a hammer and the big pieces, wrapped in an old towel. To crush 'em, hit the wrapped pieces vigorously several times with the hammer on top of a stable, hard surface.

Do you have a mortar and pestle? Then you can use it to chop up the pieces a little more elegantly.

In the meantime, you can recycle the old coffee pods from the Senseo machine by tearing them open, pouring the coffee powder into a box (for fertilizing the plants later) and cutting the pods into rectangular pieces.

Step 2: Dissolving the Chery Gum

To dissolve the cherry gum, you can either put it in a sauce pan, add some water to cover everything, and turn on the stove. As it gets warmer, stir it all the time so it doesn't burn in the saucepan. After a while, the consistency will be like liquid gelatin or honey. All hard grains should have dissolved in the water. If it gets too chewy, add more water and keep stirring.

Another option is to dissolve the cherry gum in a water bath. This prevents it from getting too hot or even burning. Place a jam jar in a saucepan on the stove. There should be enough water in the pot so that the glass has water under its base but cannot tip over. Now add the cherry gum grains and some water to the pot.

You can screw the lid onto the jam jar, but then you should poke a small hole in the lid beforehand, through which air and water vapor can escape (not visible in the photo). Otherwise the jam jar could burst.

Wait for the water in the saucepan to boil. You can put the lid onto the sauce pan and wait for some hours or stir while holding the hot jam jar with a towel.

When your cherry gum feels too liquid, let it dry onto the stove for some minutes while stirring.

In the first pictures you can see old cherry gum, which contains algae, dust and lichen and which has darkened nicely. The last pictures show fresh cherry gum that was crystal clear when it was harvested and has remained that way.

By getting older on a dry spot on the cherry tree, the cherry gum darkens like pine resin coloured yellow, orange, reddish and later deep brown over the years.

Step 3: Something Artisanal

Take the wooden spatula, put it into the saucepan with cherry gum, and smear a small portion of it onto the coffee pod paper.

Now pick up a pinch of the flower seeds with two fingers and sprinkle them over the cherry gum smeared on the paper.

Take this paper and stick it upside down on the bigger paper towel or tissue.

When you have finished making several flower seed cards, put the big paper in a warm, dry place, i.e. in the sun, on a radiator, etc.

Step 4: Finally ...

That's what it looks like after drying! If you use paper towel on both sides your seed cards will be white on both sides, of course.

Just take your scissors and now cut the paper into pieces.

Now you can give the seed cards to others or put them in the ground yourself. To do this, cover one or more seed cards with about 1 cm of soil in a pot or in your garden. Then water it gently so the soil doesn't float away, and keep it wet in the days to come.

Step 5: The Plants Are Already Growing ...

Still small, but the plants are already growing and the bees are looking forward for visiting and harvesting them!

Step 6: The Mold ...

Unfortunately, the remnants of the cherry gum diluted with water go moldy even in the refrigerator within a few days. This happens because cherry gum contains several kinds of sugar and proteins. Good mixture for mold!

You could use borax as a preservative. I didn't try that because children are supposed to work with it. We tried a fair amount of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) dissolved in cherry gum. Unfortunately, that didn't work against the mold.

Maybe freezing could save it from mold.

If you have some ideas to preserve the cherry gum please let me know about it and I'll add it here.

Step 7: Gluing Experiments With Cherry Gum

My kids got the idea to try the home made cherry gum glue with different materials. So they sticked some pine wood, plastic mugs, newspaper and fabric together. The results:

• The paper sticked fantastic together, comparable with normal kids craft glue.
• The wooden pieces stuck very stable together. It needed big forces to divide them again. So it was not that stable as wood glue but not that bad at all.
• The plastic mugs did not stick together really good - a mouse would be able to divide them again. We expected this due to the plastic's lack of surface roughness.
• We found it interesting how the adhesive worked on the fabric (cotton canvas). At first, the two fabrics didn't stick to each other at all. The children found out that the fibres of the fabric had completely soaked up the glue and that there was nothing left for the actual gluing process. So in a new attempt we coated the already glue-soaked fabrics with new glue and placed them between newspapers to dry and weighed them down with heavy weights. After two days the fabric pieces were really firmly glued! However, the bond could also be released again by tearing firmly. Apparently, the cherry gum becomes firm and brittle again as it dries. For the bonding of textiles it would have to remain flexible.