I am outside today picking wild sour cherries, Prunus cerasus. These sour pie cherries are ready to pick before the black sweet cherries. In this video, I show you how to identify them.
All wild cherries love the transition areas from woods to a field so look for them on the side of the road and woods next to a farm field.
The leaves are simple sawtooth ovate or oval leaves that are larger at the top. The cherry grows in whorled clusters unlike the choke and black cherry which grow in clusters that resemble grapes. The bark is grey with fairly smooth with horizontal furrows. The grey bark distinguishes the sour cherry from the mazzard cherry tree which has a red-brown look to it.
Cherry trees in the wild tend to be very tall so it's handy to carry a long hooked branch that you can use to hook and pull down the branches to reach the hard to reach cherries.
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