Black Cherry: Necessary and Underrated

It’s black cherry season in Wild Philly, the time of year when black cherries (Prunus serotina) are in full bloom, their branches weighted down by long plumes of nectar-rich five-petaled white flowers. And if you've got the tree nearby-- one thankfully grows in my next-door neighbor's yard-- you’re lucky, as the tree should be literally abuzz with bees, flies, butterflies, and other pollinators right about now. 

When the flowers are all pollinated, the small petals drop off the flower plumes, like snow falling from the sky-- it’s an enchanting site for a couple of days. 

Once pollinated, the flowers become small black fruit, lending the tree its name. These berries are eaten by, one source indicates, 33 species of forest critters, including birds and mammals. It’s also the host plant of two butterflies, the tiger swallowtail and red-spotted purple. 

That’s why it’s a necessary tree, providing nectar, pollen, and berries for literally thousands of species. 

And that’s also why it’s underrated-- few of us can spot one to thank it for the ecosystem services it provides. Luckily, there’s an easy fix. Like sycamore and beech, this is one of the very few trees in a Wild Philly forest you can identify by bark: just look for peeling bark that resembles burnt potato chips. 

A pioneer species, black cherries are one of the first trees to colonize a new area. They’re also fairly long-lived, lasting more than 100 years as the forest matures around it, then giving way to climax trees like oak and beech. The bark, while valued for furniture, is sadly weak; my staff at the Schuylkill Center would spend an outsized amount of time dealing with cracked and fallen black cherry limbs.

It’s also the black cherry of cough syrup fame, its inner bark including a chemical that has long been used in cough syrups and tonics-- you can smell an almond odor when you scratch its twig. But that chemical includes arsenic, and livestock have been poisoned by eating too many dried black cherry leaves. 

I mentioned earlier that its bark appears like burnt potato chips. That’s true of mature trees. When first growing, the tree's bark is smooth with horizontal lines, looking very much like a  black birch, which just might be growing nearby. It’s the mature trees that make it easy to introduce yourself. Make sure you do, this week in Wild Philly.