The open plant encyclopedia
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.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Prunus virginiana
Also called Bitter Berry, Virginia Bird Cherry, Common Chokecherry, Eastern Chokecherry, Red Chokecherry, Virginia Chokecherry
A North American suckering shrub or small tree, usually 1 to 6 metres tall, grown for its white spring flowers and astringent red-to-black fruit. The key is to plant it in full sun or part shade and not to eat the unripe fruit or wilted foliage.
Prunus virginiana, commonly called bitter-berry, chokecherry, Virginia bird cherry, and western chokecherry (also black chokecherry for P. virginiana var. demissa), is a North American species of bird cherry (Prunus subgenus Padus).
Forming a tree generally up to 6 metres (19+1⁄2 feet) tall, the leaves are oval, green, and smooth, with racemes of white flowers and red to black drupes. The unripe fruits are toxic, as is the stone and much of the plant, but the ripe fruits are edible, being part of Native American cuisine.
The chokecherry has a number of cultivars. 'Canada Red' and 'Schubert' have leaves that mature to purple and turn orange and red in the autumn. 'Goertz' has a nonastringent, so palatable, fruit. Research at the University of Saskatchewan seeks to find or create new cultivars to increase production and processing.
The stone of the fruit is poisonous. Chokecherry, including the foliage, is toxic to moose, cattle, goats, deer, and other animals with segmented stomachs (rumens), especially after the leaves have wilted (such as after a frost or after branches have been broken); wilting releases cyanide and makes the plant sweet. About 4.5–9 kilograms (10–20 pounds) of foliage can be fatal. In horses, symptoms include heavy breathing, agitation, and weakness.
The similar fruits of P. caroliniana are also somewhat toxic.
The natural historic range of P. virginiana includes most of Canada (including Northwest Territories, but excluding Yukon, Nunavut, and Labrador), most of the United States (including Alaska, but excluding some states in the Southeast), and northern Mexico (Sonora, Chihuahua, Baja California, Durango, Zacatecas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León).
The chokecherry fruit can be eaten when fully ripe, but otherwise contains a toxin. The fruit can be used to make jam or syrup, but the bitter nature of the fruit requires sugar to sweeten the preserves. Chokecherry is also used to make wine in the Western United States, mainly in the Dakotas and Utah, as well as in Manitoba, Canada.
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 virginiana 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.
