Plant · P-393

Nanking Cherry

Prunus tomentosa

Nanking Cherry is a dense, twiggy shrub that produces a heavy, early crop of juicy, sub-acid red cherries, good fresh or cooked into pies, jams and jellies. Its fragrant pink-white spring flowers draw large numbers of beneficial insects, but the shrub is only partially self-fertile, so yields jump with a second plant nearby, and planted in a row it doubles as an effective windbreak hedge. It needs real winter cold and a mild summer to crop well, declining wherever summers turn long, hot and humid, and it spreads on its own by root sucker and self-sown seed into a widening colony that a mown or grazed margin keeps in check.