CHOKE CHERRY

CHOKE CHERRY IN BLOOM...

...ATTRACTIVE PAN ICLES OF FLOWERS...

RED-BROWN, SHINY, DOTTED BARK

Sunday, 9:00 AM.  Wind WSW, calm at present.  The sky is mostly cloudy and hazy, but clearing from heavy fog earlier.  It rained about .5" last night and it looks like it will be a drippy day. The humidity is 97% and the barometer is trending down, now at 29.82".  I got all the annual plants for the porch and deck potted yesterday, and got some of the "herb garden" planted, including a coupe of tomatoes.  It isn't finished and the perennial garden needs a lot of weeding, but I am making progress.  All in all, things look nice.  Our Texas family is leaving on Thursday and we still haven't done all the things we wanted to do, but have had a good visit anyway.  Spring is a really busy time for me and I haven't been a very good host.  But we are going to the Legendary Waters Casino at Red Cliff for brunch; at least we feed everyone well.
   Continuing the discussion of native cherries, the choke cherry, Prunus virginiana, is blooming now in our woods edges and along roadsides. It is a suckering shrub or small, multi-trnked tree native to most of North America.  Its flowers are borne in attractive, cylindrical panicles.  The fruit is at first bright red, then ripens to dark red and purple.  The cherries have an acid, sour to bitter taste (thus the name "choke cherry") but become somewhat more palatable when fully ripe.  They are an abundant source of wildlife food but little used for human consumption except occasionally in jams and jellies.  The smooth bark is reddish brown, with many lenticels (small horizontal slit and dots in the bark which function in the exchange of atmospheric gasses). The bark is a distinctive identification characteristic, although it is quite similar in appearance to  the invasive buckthorns.  The buckthorns, however, do not have significant flowers, and their fruit is a blue-black drupe that has three seeds, rather than a single stone as do cherries.
   Wild cherries are quite pretty in bloom, and can be used in a naturalized landscape but are in general difficult to use and to control.  An exception to this statement are the selections of Prunus virginiana 'Canada Red', and 'Schubert', which have purple leaves and have been much touted as street and landscape trees for tough western and northern climates.  I have not had good success with them as they seem to be very prone to black knot of plum, a disfiguring and eventually deadly disease of plums and cherries.  They also sucker from the base of the trunk a lot when young, requiring much pruning.