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Introduction
This small deciduous species of cherry tree is native to British Columbia. It is found from BC south to California and east to Montana, Wyoming and Arizona.
Species Information
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expanded illustration for this species.
General: Shrub or small tree, 2-15 m tall, sometimes thicket-forming, smooth to densely hairy throughout; bark reddish-brown or grey, with horizontal lenticels.
Leaves: Alternate, deciduous, elliptic to egg-shaped or lanceolate, 3-8 cm long, finely round-toothed, rounded or blunt to sometimes sharp-pointed at the tip, wedge-shaped to pointed at the base, densely hairy (at least below) to smooth; leaf stalks 5-12 mm long, usually lacking small glands at the top.
Flowers: Inflorescences short, rounded to flat-topped clusters, at the ends of short spur-shoots, of 3 to 10 stalked flowers; corollas white, saucer-shaped, the petals 5, egg-shaped, 5-7 mm long, often hairy on the lower surface; calyces smooth to coarse-hairy, 5-lobed, the oblong lobes about 2 mm long; ovaries superior; stamens about 20.
Fruits: Fleshy drupes with a large ellipsoid stone (cherries), egg- to globe-shaped, 8-12 mm long, bright red to purple; seeds 1.
Notes: The more typical tree-like plants from coastal areas have been given the varietal name mollis (Dougl.) Brew.
Moist open forests, thickets, rocky slopes and streambanks in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; common in southwestern BC, disjunct in WC BC, infrequent in S BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains; S to CA and E to MT, WY and AZ.
The table below shows the species-specific information calculated from original data (BEC database) provided by the BC Ministry of Forests and Range. (Updated August, 2013)
