How to Identify Choke Cherry Trees

Both chokecherries and wild black cherries produce flowers and fruits in racemes.

The common chokecherry, Prunus virginiana, is a wild cherry that often grows in dense thickets as very large, multi-stemmed shrubs. It is often confused with wild black cherry (P. serotina) and with pin cherry (P. pennsylvanica, sometimes called fire cherry). The chokecherry produces fragrant racemes or pyramid-like spikes of white flowers in late spring that mature into clusters of tart, dark purple-black cherries from midsummer to early fall. Chokecherries tolerate more shade than other native cherries, so songbirds and small and large mammals can devour its fruit or browse its vegetation in the relative safety of the woods.

Things You'll Need

• Fruit clusters of pin cherry, wild black cherry & chokecherry
• Leaves of wild black cherry & chokecherry

Instructions

1. Observe trees’ general appearance, location and context. Note that the wild black cherry is most tree-like, and commonly found in woods near orchards. Compare plant height. Native black cherry grows to 80 feet or more. Both chokecherry and pin cherry “trees” are more shrub-like in general appearance--they are often multi-stemmed--and rarely grow taller than 30 feet.

2. Carefully study fruit clusters. Observe that stems for each cluster of pin cherries join at the same point, like cultivated cherries. Note, by contrast, that both the chokecherry and wild black cherry produce racemes, or pyramid-shaped clusters of individual fruits attached to a central axis. Examine mature fruits of wild black cherry and chokecherry, observing that black cherry fruits feature a remnant calyx cup on the stem end and the chokecherry does not.

3. Compare chokecherry and wild black cherry leaves also. Notice that on the underside of wild black cherry leaves, near the petiole or stem, the midvein is covered with rust-colored fuzz, while the chokecherry’s is smooth. Observe leaf shape as well, studying multiple examples of each plant. Note that leaves of the wild black cherry are longer and narrower than those of the chokecherry, and that chokecherry leaves are also wider at the tip.

Tips & Warnings

• Horses, cattle, sheep and goats will also eat chokecherry, and can be poisoned by toxic levels of hydrocyanic acid in leaves, stems and seeds when plants are stressed, though livestock normally won’t eat fatal amounts unless other forage is scarce.

References

• Michigan State University Extension: Upper Peninsula Tree Identification Key
• Utah State University Extension: Chokecherry
• University of Maine Extension: Common Chokecherry
• Ohio State University Extension Newsletter: Quick Guide to Chokecherry ID