Black cherry, Prunus serotina, is found throughout the Midwest. The tree is an avid colonizer of old fields and waste areas, where young trees with smooth and papery, reddish brown bark are often among the first trees to appear in the succession of organisms that leads, over time, to a mature forest. In mature woods, however, fully grown black cherry trees look very different, with dark gray bark that is broken up into distinctive scaly plates. The simple, alternate leaves have finely toothed edges, and often feature fine reddish brown hairs on the underside, along the middle vein. Racemes of small white flowers appear in the spring, and are eventually replaced by small fruits that progress with the summer from green, to red, to black.

According to our sources the cherries produced by this tree are seriously poisonous, along with the leaves and twigs, containing hydrocyanic acid.

mature trees feature a spreading crown

bark is papery and reddish brown in young trees . . .

. . . becoming gray, and eventually . . .

. . . dark gray with distinctive plate-like scales in mature trees

leaves are dark green above and pale green below, with finely serrated edges

leaves are alternate

fall leaves turn yellow

flowers appear in spring and feature 5 small white petals

loose racemes hold many flowers

after flowers disappear . . .

. . . fruits develop slowly, from green . . .

. . . to red . . .

. . . to black

References: Harlow 1946, Peattie 1948, GN Jones 1971, Miller & Jaques 1978, Kricher & Morrison 1988, Preston 1989, RL Jones 2005, Mohlenbrock 2006, Kershaw 2007, Sibley 2009, Voss & Reznicek 2012, Mohlenbrock 2014, Hilty 2021, USDA 2021.

Kuo, Michael & Melissa Kuo (August, 2021). Prunus serotina (black cherry). Retrieved from the midwestnaturalist.com website: www.midwestnaturalist.com/prunus_serotina.html

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