Another tree I found growing on my land. I am assuming it is an intentional planting based on the location. For reference, I am in zone 4b/5a in Wisconsin.
I have attached pictures of when it was flowering, the leaves, and a picture of the fruit taken on July 5th.
I know it is not the native black cherry or chokecherry. My guess is that it is a tart cherry, but I am wondering if it by chance a sweet cherry?
There are only a few fruits or so on the entire tree, so even with the heavy show of flowers, it did not produce many fruits and I’m afraid I’ll miss these when they’re ripe to birds, if they’re tasty.
Are the fruit pretty tart even when ripe? Self-sterile sweet cherry of some type?
If you want to improve its fruit you should probably prune it. All that twiggy stuff in the interior is probably shaded out at this point I would think?
Yeah, since you said there’s not much fruit in the tree you can definitely prune where there isn’t any fruit set, although you might want to wait for fall to conserve your time.
Everything in the pictures looks like a Mahaleb Cherry, and PictureThis says it’s Mahaleb. I had just looked them up the other day and it’s pretty common in your area even as a naturalized tree.
That is what I saw on my photo ID app. But I thought it was possibly wrong since it says it is a non USA tree. That’s why I asked for a photo of the fruit once it ripens.
Very interesting. I am completely unfamiliar with the Mahaleb Cherry. I guess we’ll see if these fruits end up ripening and I can see what they look like.
Maybe I can use this tree as a rootstock for a sweet or tart cherry.
This Canadian nursery is selling it as the semidwarfing rootstock for a zone 4 Nanking tart cherry hybrid.
And this European site is settling them as full sized rootstock for sweet or tart cherries and cold Hardy to zone 4.
I saw a US distribution map, and they’re all over, but I couldn’t find it quickly, just trust me, or search for yourselves please.
But what I would recommend at that size is making a picker out of a coca cola bottle and collecting the bird cherries (they’re very similar), grafting old cherries can be hard, or you could try cutting out the central trunk and grafting to that in the spring, leaving most of the side branches, then if that works finish frameworking the tree in following years.
