Prunus maackii Seeds | Amur Chokecherry
LATIN NAME: Prunus maackii
COMMON NAME: Amur Chokecherry
Plant Profile
The Amur chokecherry is grown less for its flowers than for its bark. On a young tree the trunk is a polished amber to copper colour, and it peels in horizontal papery strips the way birch bark does, catching light through the winter. The tree reaches fifteen metres in the wild, with an open, rounded crown and ovate leaves that turn yellow in autumn.
In May it carries short racemes of small white flowers, and by August these have become tiny, bitter black cherries, each no bigger than a pea. It is native to the Amur basin, Manchuria and the Korean peninsula, and it is one of the hardiest of the cherries, surviving -40 °C. The species is named for Richard Maack, a Baltic German naturalist who explored the Amur in the 1850s and brought back the first specimens.
Science & Biotechnology
Prunus maackii sits in the section Padus, the bird cherries, which differ from the true cherries in carrying their flowers in racemes rather than in umbel-like clusters. The section is now often treated as a separate genus, Padus, and molecular phylogenies support the split, which is why the plant appears in some lists as Padus maackii.
The bark is unusual in the genus: the corky layers that peel away are rich in betulin-like compounds and give the tree its resistance to sunscald, a real problem for cherries grown in cold, bright climates. Seed dispersal is by birds, mainly thrushes, which take the fruit in late summer and pass the stones intact. The species hybridises in cultivation with Prunus virginiana, and the offspring are intermediate in bark and in fruit colour.
Uses & Benefits
Amur chokecherry is planted as a specimen tree for its bark, most often against a dark background of conifers or in a winter garden where the low sun will strike the trunk. It is also used in shelterbelts on the northern plains of North America, where its cold hardiness and its tolerance of wind make it more useful than most ornamental cherries.
The wood is hard, close-grained and takes a fine polish, and in Manchuria it has been used for tool handles and small turnery, though the tree is never common enough to be important timber. The fruit is edible in the sense that it is not poisonous, but it is astringent and mostly stone, and birds strip it before it is worth picking. The tree lives for forty or fifty years, which is short for a cherry of this size, and old plants become hollow.
Growing from Seed
The stone has a hard shell and a dormant embryo, so it needs both warmth and cold: sow in autumn in a pot of loam and grit, leave it outside through winter, and expect germination in the second spring. Alternatively, warm-stratify for six weeks at 20 °C, then cold-stratify for twelve weeks at 4 °C. Mice are fond of the stones, so cover the pots with mesh.
Prick out the seedlings while they are still small, since the taproot is long and resents disturbance, and grow them on in deep pots. Plant out in autumn in full sun and in soil that drains, and keep the trunk clear of grass for the first three years. The bark colours best on a tree grown without shade, and it begins to peel at about four or five years old, which is when the tree is worth looking at in winter.
Our Take
A cherry to plant for its winter bark rather than its fruit. Give it sun, cold and a dark backdrop, and it will look after itself.
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