By Patsy Cotterill
Chokecherry is a deciduous shrub or small tree in the rose family (Rosaceae) reaching 1-6 m tall, and is common as an understory shrub in our forests and in grassland thickets. It does sucker, which is useful if you want a hedge or thicket, but to maintain a specimen shrub in the garden the suckers may need to be periodically removed.
The leaves are alternate, obovate (that is, ovate, but broader towards the tip), 2.5-9 cm long, toothed, usually abruptly narrowed at the tip, dark green above and paler below. The white flowers are clustered in a long (4-11 cm) cylindrical inflorescence. The flower, about 5 mm long, has the typical simple rose structure, with five sepals and petals, about 20 stamens, and a single stigma, style and ovary (pistil). The ovary develops into the “berry” which is actually a single-seeded fruit with a hard covering or “stone” called a drupe.
Chokecherry blooms after the leaves have appeared in May (shortly after saskatoons), and the fruits ripen throughout the summer. The fruits are initially green, then turn red and remain very astringent at this stage (hence the name “chokecherry”). However, they are tolerably palatable and can be eaten fresh when they are blue-black and ripe. The seed or “stone” should be spat out as like most cherries it contains a toxin.
An advantage for garden landscaping is that chokecherry leaves turn red in the fall, the shrub being rich in the purple-red pigment anthocyanin which protects the plant as an antioxidant. For the native gardener, it is a good native alternative to the mayday tree, Prunus padus.
Chokecherry has a wide range across Canada and the U.S. The fruit has been widely used by Indigenous peoples as food, particularly cooked, and the inner bark has been used for medicine and in ceremonies.
The twigs and leaves are eaten by a variety of wildlife, and also domestic animals (although foliage can be toxic in large quantities or after the leaves have wilted). Birds relish the fruits. As might be expected for a wide-ranging species, the larvae of a number of species of butterfly and moth feed on its leaves. It is a common host of tent caterpillars which construct their nests in it.