Our native Bitter Cherry in Bonhoeffer Botanical Gardens is found at Kiosk 8.  It is as large a deciduous specimen of this species as might be found, easily identified by its bark that has horizontal striations. Flowers are in clusters, white and showy and in the Autumn, giving way to shiny dark red berries that are eaten by birds and animals. These berries make humans very sick (are inedible) and as the name suggests, are very bitter. In the Spring you may see a variety of native butterflies use this tree as a larval host (Cabbage Whites, Lorquin’s Admiral, Spring Azure, and Western Swallowtail.)  If you drive along the freeway in early Spring, its flowering is followed almost a month later with other cherries that may look the same. These are domestics that have “gone wild;” and are often sterile, producing little fruit. Some years ago, the cherries in the University of Washington Quad were dying and no one could determine the cause.  Asking the Japanese source for this species, the response was, “this species has a lifetime of but 50 years.”  This is true of our Bitter Cherry, also called Oregon Cherry, most often found in areas that are moist and shady; its lifespan typically mirrors a human’s, 80 years.  Point, its survival as a species requires its seeds’ germination.  A member of the Rosaceae Family, it is also found in the Farm’s Ethnobotanical Gardens by the Scottish Cabin.  Pilchuck Learning Center’s sponsored Western Washington State University SAM Project extinction possibility is slight; abundant, also found in the Rocky Mountains with little chance of extinction.

http://naeb.brit.org/uses/search/?string=Prunus+emarginata
https://plants.usda.gov/home/plantProfile?symbol=PREM
https://www.plc215.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Kiosk-08.pdf
https://burkeherbarium.org/imagecollection/taxon.php?Taxon=Prunus%20emarginata

The flower color of the Bitter Cherry is:

red
blue
white

Comments, content, questions appreciated; email bb@plc215.org

Copyright © 2024