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About Black Cherry
Black cherry (Prunus serotina) is a native deciduous tree with fragrant white spring flowers, glossy green leaves, dark cherries, and distinctive dark bark. In spring, it produces long, drooping clusters of small white flowers called racemes. By late summer, those flowers mature into small round fruits that ripen from red to deep purple-black.
The leaves are simple, alternate, and oval to lance-shaped, with fine teeth along the edges. A helpful field clue is the row of tiny rusty or whitish hairs along the underside of the leaf’s midrib. Older trees often develop dark, scaly bark that looks a bit like burnt potato chips, which is one of black cherry’s most recognizable features.
Black cherry is both beautiful and ecologically powerful. It feeds pollinators in spring, hosts many caterpillars, and produces fruit for birds and mammals. In a coloring page, it offers white flower clusters, shiny leaves, dark cherries, textured bark, and plenty of room for butterflies, moths, bees, and berry-loving birds.
Where Black Cherry Grows
Black cherry is native across much of eastern North America, with its range extending into parts of the Midwest, South, and beyond. It grows in woods, woodland edges, old fields, fencerows, roadsides, thickets, slopes, disturbed areas, and mixed hardwood forests. It is often one of the first trees to appear in open or disturbed ground.
This tree grows best in full sun to part shade and prefers well-drained soil. It can handle a range of soil types, but it often grows especially well in fertile, moderately moist sites. In the wild, black cherry may grow with oaks, hickories, maples, tulip tree, sassafras, serviceberry, dogwood, and other eastern forest trees.
In gardens and restoration plantings, black cherry can be used as a wildlife tree, shade tree, hedgerow tree, or woodland-edge species. It can grow tall, so it needs enough room to mature. The leaves, bark, twigs, and seeds contain toxic compounds and can be dangerous to livestock, especially when leaves are wilted, so placement matters in pastures and animal areas.
Pollinators It Supports
Black cherry flowers are visited by bees and other spring insects that collect nectar and pollen from the white flower clusters. Likely visitors include mining bees such as Andrena species, sweat bees such as Lasioglossum species, hover flies such as Toxomerus marginatus, and larger bees such as the common eastern bumble bee (Bombus impatiens). The flowers are small and open, which makes them useful for many short-tongued insects.
The bigger wildlife story is caterpillars. Black cherry and other native Prunus species support many butterflies and moths. Specific species associated with black cherry include the eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus), Canadian tiger swallowtail (Papilio canadensis) in northern regions, red-spotted purple (Limenitis arthemis astyanax), viceroy (Limenitis archippus), coral hairstreak (Satyrium titus), striped hairstreak (Satyrium liparops), cecropia moth (Hyalophora cecropia), promethea moth (Callosamia promethea), small-eyed sphinx (Paonias myops), and eastern tent caterpillar moth (Malacosoma americanum).
The fruits are eaten by many birds and mammals. Good species to show with black cherry include cedar waxwing, American robin, gray catbird, wood thrush, northern cardinal, rose-breasted grosbeak, pileated woodpecker, ruffed grouse, fox squirrel, eastern chipmunk, raccoon, and black bear. For a coloring page, black cherry pairs beautifully with a tiger swallowtail, red-spotted purple, promethea moth, cedar waxwing, or catbird among the fruit clusters.
Coloring Tips
Color the spring flowers white or creamy white, with pale yellow or soft green centers. The flower clusters hang in narrow racemes, so use small dots or tiny five-petaled flowers along a drooping stem rather than one large bloom. Add a soft green stem to each flower cluster.
The leaves are glossy medium to dark green in summer, with paler undersides and fine toothed edges. In fall, they may turn yellow, orange, red, or bronze. Young twigs can be reddish-brown, while older bark should be dark gray to nearly black with rough, scaly plates.
The fruits are fun to color in stages. Young cherries can be green, then red, then deep purple, burgundy, or almost black when ripe. Add tiny white highlights to make ripe fruit look glossy. For the background, place black cherry along a woodland edge, old field, hedgerow, or sunny forest opening. To show wildlife value, include an eastern tiger swallowtail, red-spotted purple, promethea moth caterpillar, cedar waxwing, or gray catbird near the flowers or fruit.