The Lapins Cherry Origin — A Refugee, A Research Station, and A Revolution

All about the Lapin Cherry:

The Lapins cherry carries a human story as remarkable as the Bing's — and like the Bing, that story begins with a man whose name the cherry permanently preserves.

Karlis Lapins was born in Latvia in 1909. He studied agronomy there, but World War II drove him from his country as a refugee. He eventually made his way to British Columbia, and in the late 1940s found work as a laborer at Agriculture Canada's Summerland Research Station — the same institution that would later have a relationship to approximately 80% of the commercial cherry varieties in the world. He was not hired as a scientist. He started at the bottom.

His first assignment was identifying mislabeled fruit trees — growers had been receiving trees from nurseries that turned out to be wrong varieties when they fruited, and nobody knew until years later. Lapins visited nurseries across British Columbia, figured out how to identify different varieties from one-year-old shoots, and compiled a bulletin that became the standard reference for nursery inspectors. It was meticulous, unglamorous work — but it gave him an intimate knowledge of cherry variety genetics that few people possessed. 

He spent a year earning his master's degree at the University of British Columbia, then applied for the plant breeder position at Summerland when it opened in 1953. He got it. He would stay for the next three decades, becoming one of the most consequential cherry breeders in history. 

His central obsession was self-fertility. He pioneered self-compatible sweet cherry varieties to overcome the pollination challenges that had constrained commercial orchards for centuries — most sweet cherries being unable to fertilize their own flowers, requiring compatible pollinizer varieties and precise orchard planning to produce any fruit at all. 

The key breakthrough came through a collaboration with the John Innes Institute in England, where Dr. Dan Lewis had used radiation-mutated pollen to create the first commercially successful self-fertile sweet cherry variety. Lapins obtained those seedlings, crossed them with Lambert — one of the most important Pacific Northwest commercial varieties — and produced Stella: the first confirmed self-fertile sweet cherry ever developed, released in 1968, which launched the Summerland Research Station to international acclaim and forever changed the commercial cherry industry. 

But Lapins was not finished. Using Stella as a parent, he made a controlled cross with Van in 1965 — Van is believed to carry some Duke cherry ancestry through Empress Eugenie, potentially contributing subtle sour-cherry genetic influence. The resulting seedling combined Van's fruit quality with Stella's self-fertility, and added crack resistance and late-season timing that neither parent fully offered. That seedling became the Lapins cherry.

The Name — And Why It Broke the Rules

With very few exceptions, the names of cherry varieties released by Summerland have begun with the letter S. But when it came time to name the Van-Stella cross, Hugh Dendy, a grower in Kelowna who had been testing it and considered it one of the best he had ever grown, said he had already named it after its originator. He felt that Dr. Lapins should be honored for his work in developing self-fertile cherries and for recognizing the need for high-quality late-season varieties. The name stuck. 

It was released commercially in 1983 — years after Lapins had retired. In 1992, Dr. Lapins received the Wilder Medal, awarded by the American Pomological Society for outstanding service in horticulture and especially for the introduction of meritorious fruit varieties. He died in 2004 at the age of 95. 

The man who arrived in Canada as a refugee, started as a laborer identifying mislabeled trees, and worked his way to becoming one of the most important fruit breeders in history, has his name spoken every summer in orchards and markets across Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, and Chile. The variety also goes by the commercial name Cherokee in some markets — but everywhere that matters, it is Lapins.

Which Group It Belongs To

The Lapins is a sweet cherry — Prunus avium — and a dark variety, its skin ripening to deep red, nearly black at full maturity. It is self-fertile, meaning a single tree produces a full commercial crop without any pollinizer variety — one of its most important commercial characteristics. It is also a universal pollinizer, compatible with a wide range of other varieties, meaning it actively helps neighboring trees set fruit while needing nothing in return. Like its parent Stella, the Lapins cherry is self-fertile and an excellent pollinator for other cherry varieties.

How Old It Is

The cross was made in 1965, the variety released commercially in 1983. It is now roughly 60 years old as a recognized selection and about 42 years into its commercial life — old enough to be considered established, young enough that its position in the market has shifted considerably over that time.

Flavor — Rich, Round, and Sweet

The Lapins cherry produces large, firm, dark red fruit with a rich, sweet flavor similar to the popular Bing variety but with improved resistance to cracking and splitting. Where the Bing has a pronounced sweet-tart balance with noticeable acidity, the Lapins is rounder and softer in character — lower acidity, more straightforwardly sweet, less of the bright tang that gives the Bing its assertive edge. It is not a lesser cherry — it is a different expression. Fruit that is richer, darker, and heavier in the hand, delivering sweetness without the Bing's bite. 

Dr. Lapins himself said the cherry had turned out better than he thought it was when he selected it, because growers have used gibberellic acid sprays to delay the ripening and increase the size. 

The Lapins is consistently one of the largest cherries of our Cherry season. It is a deeply fun dark cherry.

Brix

Lapins typically measures 15 to 17 Brix at commercial harvest — similar to the Bing, but with a lower acid profile that makes the sweetness register in the mouth differently. Low-crop-load Lapins from good sites can measure higher, approaching 18 to 20 Brix, where the fruit becomes genuinely impressive, typically where our cherries come from.

Distinctive Physical Characteristics

One distinctive trait worth noting: the Lapins turns deep red well before it is ready to pick — and unlike some varieties it is sweet while still red. Full maturity comes later than the color suggests, and the difference between a Lapins picked at color and a Lapins picked at true maturity is considerable.

Crack Resistance — A Significant Advantage

One of the original breeding goals was crack resistance, and the Lapins delivers it meaningfully. It withstands rain during the harvest window far better than the Bing. It ripens at a time when there is usually no heavy rain — its late-season timing working in its favor on that front as well. 

Self-Fertility — The Commercial Revolution Embodied

The Lapins is the direct commercial descendant of the self-fertility breakthrough that Charles Lapins himself engineered through Stella. A single Lapins tree produces a full commercial crop. No pollinizer rows, no compatibility planning, no dependence on another variety's bloom timing aligning with its own. 

Where It Sits in the Season

The Lapins arrives after the Bing and Rainier — ripening approximately two weeks after Bing — placing it in the late-season window before the Sweetheart. It is consistently among the largest cherries of the season, sometimes the largest, which has made it a visual anchor for our late-season display alongside the Sweetheart. The two together — Lapins and Sweetheart — represent the final chapter of the Pacific Northwest cherry season for ChefShop.

Its Place in Cherry History

The Lapins cherry is the direct fruit of one man's lifetime of work — a Latvian refugee who started as a laborer identifying mislabeled trees and ended as the architect of the self-fertile cherry revolution. The variety itself carries the genetic thread of that entire journey: Van's Duke heritage, Stella's radiation-derived self-fertility, and the late-season, large-fruit character that Lapins spent three decades trying to build into a single cherry.

That a grower in Kelowna insisted it be named after its creator — breaking Summerland's own naming convention in the process — is the kind of detail that belongs in the story. Hugh Dendy knew what he had tasted, and he knew who had made it possible. The name stuck. Decades later, it still does.