Black Cherry

Size, growth and what to expect

Black cherry grows fast, about two and three quarter feet a year in our growth estimator while young. It makes a tree 50 to 80 feet tall with a crown 30 to 60 feet wide in the open. Trees first bear between 5 and 10 years old, and the heaviest crops come from trees 30 to 100 years old.

Drooping spikes of small white flowers, 3 to 6 inches long, open from April into June, after the leaves. Bees, flies and beetles work them. The cherries ripen from June in the South to September in the North, dark red turning black and about three eighths of an inch across. At least 33 kinds of birds eat them, from robins and thrushes to wild turkeys, and black bears, foxes and raccoons take them too.

It grows wild from Nova Scotia west to Minnesota and south to central Florida and eastern Texas, with outlying stands in central Texas and in the mountains of Arizona and New Mexico. Its home is open woods, forest gaps, old fields and fence rows, and it does best on the cool, moist slopes of the Allegheny Plateau.

How to grow Black Cherry

Black cherry wants full sun and takes light shade. It grows in most well-drained soils, acid to neutral, from moist to fairly dry. It will not stand wet ground or flooding. It drops fruit, leaves and twigs, so keep it off drives and patios. Plant it 30 feet from a wall, and set trees 30 feet apart. Keep it more than 50 feet from overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them dormant, from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the root flare at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the trunk. Sow the cleaned pits outdoors in early fall, an inch deep under hardware cloth. Some come up the first spring and more the second. For spring, hold them damp in the refrigerator for three to four months first.

Water weekly through the first summer, then only in a long drought. Keep grass pulled back from young trees, since meadow voles hide in it and girdle the stems. Deer browse the seedlings, so guard each sapling with wire for its first few years.

Black cherry sets no seed with its own pollen, so plant two or more seedlings from different parents for a crop of cherries. Eastern tent caterpillars and the cherry scallop shell moth can strip the leaves in some years. Black knot is common, raising rough black swellings on twigs and branches. Ice and wet snow often bend young trees and break their leaders. Birds carry the pits far, and seedlings come up along fences and in open ground. The leaves, twigs, bark and pits are poisonous, and wilted leaves can sicken or kill livestock, so keep grazing animals away from fallen branches.