Photo: Prunus_pennsylvanica_139-8486.jpg: M.S. del, J.N.Fitch, lith. derivative work: Halava — Public domain · source
Survives zone 2 through 7
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
The small, sour cherries are too tart for most fresh eating but are traditionally cooked down into jams, jellies, and syrups, and are an important food source for dozens of bird species as well as small mammals and bears. ⚠ Kernels/pits cyanogenic.
- Hardiness
- Zone 2–7
- Habit
- Tree
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- Summer–autumn
- Mature size
- Small tree 5–12 m, and short-lived with it
- Light
- Full sun (light-demanding pioneer)
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Boreal
- Native range
- Northern North America, from British Columbia and the Northwest Territories east to Newfoundland, south through the Appalachians to Georgia, Tennessee, and Illinois, and west to Colorado
- Status
- Wild
- Years to fruit
- 2–4 yrs
- Growth speed
- Fast — a short-lived pioneer that colonises burns and clearings quickly and is gone in 20–40 years
- Spacing
- 350 cm (138 in) apart — about 12 m² (132 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Lanceolate to elliptic, 4–11 cm long and 1–4.5 cm wide, finely serrated margins, bright green above and paler with fine hairs along the veins beneath.
- Root system
- Shallow and strongly suckering, throwing root shoots that build a thicket over time — the natural habit of the American plums. Useful for stabilising a bank, a nuisance in a border, and the reason a single planted tree becomes a clump. Suckers are also the easiest way to propagate it.
- Fruit description
- Small (about 6–8 mm), thin-skinned bright red cherries borne on long pedicels, with sour, watery flesh around a single small stone.
- Propagation
- By seed — a 24-hour soak followed by roughly 30 days of alternating warm/cold stratification and then 60–90 days of cold stratification gives reliable germination (around 75%); the species also naturally regenerates from a long-lived soil seed bank that can remain viable for 50–100+ years.
- Pollination
- Varies by species — see notes
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
Fertilizing. Grows in a wide range of soils from stony sand to light clay and needs little supplemental feeding; performs best in fertile, moist, well-drained ground but tolerates poor sites.
How it spreads. Suckers to form thickets and is a classic post-disturbance pioneer, rapidly colonizing sites after fire, logging, or land abandonment.
Growing tips. Fast-growing but short-lived, often senescing within 20–30 years; functions as a nurse tree, providing shade for slower-growing forest species before dying back. Requires full sun.
Grow journal
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