Pin Cherry features beautiful white flowers and striking and edible bright-red berries, sour off the tree but great in cooking.
 
     It's a medium tree, about half the size of Wild Cherry.  Fall color is brilliant in reds and oranges.  Its reddish-brown bark peels in horizontal strips.
 
     Pin Cherry makes an excellent addition to a food forest for the fruits only.  All other parts of the tree are toxic.  
 
     Pin Cherry is short-lived yet highly valuable to wildlife; as with all Prunus species, it is a Keystone Plant because it hosts hundreds of caterpillar species.  It's a larval host to the Spring Azure and Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies, among others, and songbirds eat the fruits.
 
     Other common names are Bird Cherry, because of its benefits to birds, and Fire Cherry, because it is among species first to sprout after a fire.