This article is dropping a little late (although in some northern parts of the Midwest it might be on time) but I thought I’d cover it anyways since it’s a good medicine to know out in the wild.

Let’s take a look at wild black cherries (the most common of which is the choke cherry, P. virginiana):

Scientific Name: Several species in the Prunus genus, including; P. serotina, P. pumila, P. virginiana, P. pensylvanica

Preferred Habitat: Forest margins (particularly mixed hardwood forests), poor soil in grasslands, and even swampy areas. Most wild cherries are not at all picky about their growing conditions. I have seen some species (like the sand cherry) quite literally growing in nothing but sand, and choke cherries growing in heavy gravel soil.

Edible Parts: Fruit, flowers, gum, bark

Distribution: Most of north America has a native cherry species, and the black ones seem to be particularly common.

Harvest Season: Mid to late summer depending on region. The window is somewhat short if you have a lot of birds in your area.

Key Identifiers: For choke cherry in particular: smooth silver bark that is reminiscent of birch, a shrub-like structure, elongated clusters of dark (almost black) fruit, oval leaves.

Toxic Look-Alikes: You shouldn’t have much trouble identifying wild cherries of any kind, however there are definitely a few look-alikes I’d be very careful to avoid; common buckthorn fruits around the same time and has small dark berries on trees/shrubs that are a similar size. The main giveaway is that cherries have the long clusters of fruit (pictured below) while buckthorn has individual cherries along the branches. Buckthorn also has a few distinct veins that really stand out on the leaves while cherry leaves look much smoother and less noticeable (also pictured below). Cherries also have bark that is almost

Someone who is unfamiliar could also get this confused with pokeweed since they fruit around the same time and have elongated berry clusters, but poke doesn’t have bark or grow like a shrub. The stems are also bright pink/magenta whereas cherries have distinct silver bark.

If you aren’t 100% certain, don’t eat it.

Health Benefits/Nutrition Facts (Per 100g of pitted fruit):

They are also high in antioxidants, very high in anthocyanins, and have astringent qualities.

The pits are unpleasant to eat and can have mild toxins at high dosages (similar to apple seeds) so don’t eat many of those.

Wild cherries can be used similarly to tart cherries and are commonly used for jelly, fruit leather, syrups, lemonade, baked goods, pemmican, oxymels, ferments, and can be eaten fresh.

Just like their cousins the sand cherry, most wild cherries are quite astringent even when ripe. While this is a good medicinal quality, you may need to tone it down with some honey or sweetener.

For the black cherry in particular (P. serotina), a tincture or tea can be made from the bark to help fight coughs and ease phlegm.

Something to note is that most wild cherries are tiny compared to the domestic kinds you’ll find at orchards so they are a pain to process in comparison! I personally don’t mind because they’re free other than harvesting and they’re medicinal, but just in case that matters to you readers I thought I’d mention it.

Just like sand cherry, the majority of cherry species actually grow as shrubs and not trees like domestic cherries. Typically these can be anywhere from 4ft to 15ft or more in height depending on species (although this can be controlled by pruning in midsummer).

Black cherry (P. serotina) grows much taller at over 100ft tall when well established and old.

This has some major benefits in terms of pruning, harvesting, and netting for birds if you decide to grow them. I’d say these are very low maintenance fruits in general that are perfectly suited to an edible landscape or a food forest setting.

Some species can take as little as 3-4 years to mature, some take as much as 5+ for a reliable crop if you’re growing from seed. This isn’t that long of a timeline for fruiting plants and tends to be much faster than regular domestic cherries. (I would think that grafting domestic cherries onto wild ones will help them produce a little bit faster and help their cold tolerance).

Clusters of white flowers tend to bloom in early summer and fruits are usually ripe by August in my region (Michigan).

There is a mild toxicity to the pits, but it is very slight and you will want to avoid eating the pits anyway.

While this toxin does exist, don’t panic if you accidentally swallow a few; they’re like apple seeds in that you’d need to eat a lot of them to actually experience any negative effects!

Wild cherries also make great pollinators for other stone fruits and attract many good pollinating insects to the area.

I think wild cherries (particularly native ones) hold a lot of potential for one main reason: they have diverse genetics.

Diversity of genetics is so important with plant breeding and creating resilient strains that will survive disease, fungus, pest, or climate.

The best example of this would be creating a wild cherry variety with the following traits:

Surprisingly, there actually are a few cultivars of choke cherry (and likely other wild cherries as mentioned in my article on sand cherry):

Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly where to source these varieties if you live in the US but you can reach out to either the USDA to see if they have any samples available, or the University of Saskatchewan to see if they know the best places to find them domestically.

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