Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Chinese Sour Cherry

Prunus pseudocerasus

Also called False Cherry, Ying Tao Cherry

Chinese Sour Cherry
Photo: Keith Edkins, CC BY 2.5

Chinese sour cherry is a small, bushy ornamental tree from China, grown for its early spring pink blossoms and tart edible cherries. It is a species, not a genus, and is valued for flowering before its leaves appear.

Family
Rosaceae (Rose family)
Grows as
Tree
Light
Full sun, Part shade
Water
Water regularly while young, then moderately; avoid waterlogged soil.
Soil
Well-drained loam; tolerates a range of soil types.
Temperature
Hardy to around -20 °C; protect young trees from late frost.
How easy
Easy
Safety
Toxic to cats and dogs (ASPCA).
Edible
Yes, some parts
Native range
China
Climate
temperate

About

Prunus pseudocerasus or Prunus pseudo-cerasus, the Chinese sour cherry or just Chinese cherry, is a species of cherry native to China. It is used worldwide as an ornamental for its early spring cherry blossoms. The fruit of some cultivars is edible.

Uses

In China it has been cultivated for its edible (if tart) fruit for around 2000 years. In Japan it is favored as an ornamental tree for its tendency to bloom, flowers before leaves, earlier than the Japanese cherry Prunus serrulata. A tetraploid with 2n=32 chromosomes, it is used as rootstock for other flowering cherries. It is the parent of a number of hybrid cultivars. It is resistant to the fungal disease cherry leaf spot. P. pseudocerasus is near extinction in the wild due to anthropogenic activities.

Other Prunus plants

Prunus adenopoda · Red stinkwood · Prunus aitchisonii · Alabama cherry · Prunus alaica · Allegheny plum · American plum · Prunus amplifolia · Almond · Desert peach · Chickasaw plum · Prunus annularis

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Prunus pseudocerasus by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

Pet safety from the ASPCA toxic and non-toxic plant lists.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…