Laurelcherry [prunus caroliniana]

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Laurelcherry is a small evergreen tree native to the Southeast. It's in the rose family, and related to all other cherries, plums, apples, etc. The cherries remain on the tree often until spring. Because of its smooth bark, evergreen foliage, and winter fruit - at first it looks like a holly with black berries. But it is a cherry.

The fruit is essentially a thin edible rind over a large green seed. It is strong, bitter and unripe up into the winter - like all wild cherries, bitter until soft. Since the flesh is so thin, it shrivels rather than softens - but the softening is when most of the bitterness goes away - it's still strong though, with an intense cherry liquor flavor. You're really almost eating just the skin of the cherry.

To be certain a cherry's a cherry I always eat a leaf. It's bitter usually the first 5 to 8 seconds, then an unmistakable cherry flavor hits - and there's no question. The leaves have a trace of cyanide (hydrocyanic acid), and so do the pits . . . it's interesting that Native Americans used to pound whole cherries including the pits into a mash and dry into cakes. So our understanding of hydrocyanic acid might need reevaluated.

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Many sites refer to the fruit of the laurelcherry as either poisonous or inedible. But here's a report put out by the Forest Service. They refer to the fruit as "suited for human consumption".

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