Prunus pumila – Nutritional Value, Health Benefits, Recipes

Plant Description

Sand cherry is unarmed, diffusely branched, low-growing deciduous shrub that normally grows to 2-6 feet tall depending on the variety. The plant is found growing in sand dunes, calcareous rocky shores, beaches, outwash plains, cliffs, balds, or ledges, shores of rivers or lakes, talus and rocky slopes, interdunal flats, in Upper Peninsula and Lower Peninsula, rocky ledges, pavements, and summits. The plant requires well-drained moisture-retentive soil. The plant grows in the wild on sandy, gravelly, and rocky soils, dunes, beaches, and outwash plains – sites are typically dry and excessively drained. It thrives in loamy soil, doing well on limestone. It prefers some chalk in the soil but is apt to become chlorotic if too much is present. The plant forms dense clonal colonies by sprouts from the root system. Stems are usually erect-ascending and sometimes decumbent.

Sand Cherry Facts

Twigs

Twigs are red to reddish-brown, shiny smooth developing a flaky, waxy cuticle. Branches are spreading to ascending from low, sprawling basal stems. The bark is grayish-brown, smooth becoming roughish with conspicuous horizontal pores (lenticels). Basal stems are about ¾ inch in diameter.

Leaves

Leaves are simple, leathery, and alternate, 4–7 centimeters (1.6–2.8 in) long and up to 2-3 centimeters (1 inch) wide. The blade is narrowly elliptic or widest near the tip (obovate) depending on the variety, with a pointed tip and tapering at the base to a ¼ to ½ inch stalk. The upper surface is dark green and somewhat shiny, the lower surface lighter and smooth. Edges are finely toothed except near the base.

Flowers

Numerous flat to convex clusters from lateral buds along the branches, each cluster a 1 to 3-flowered umbel (stalks all arising from the same point) and emerging before the leaves in spring. Flowers are about ½ inch across with 5 white, round to egg-shaped petals with a single slender style and a spray of slender, white, yellow-tipped stamens in the center. The 5 sepals are about 1/3 the length of the petals, lance-oblong, rounded at the tip, spreading, with several small glands along the edges near the tip. Inner and outer surfaces are smooth. Flower stalks are slender and hairless.

Fruit

Fertile flowers are followed by a small shiny globose cherry 13–15 millimeters (0.51–0.59 in) in diameter. It is reddish-purple ripening to dark purple or nearly black in early summer. Each fruit consists of a single hard seed inside.

Culinary Uses

• Fruit can be consumed raw or cooked.
• Seed can be consumed raw or cooked.
• Do not eat the seed if it is too bitter.
• It can be eaten out of hand, used in preserves, or dried for later use.

Other Facts

• A green dye can be obtained from the leaves.
• Dark grey to green dye can be obtained from the fruit.
• It is used as a rootstock for the sour cherry.
• Leaves can even provide fodder for livestock.
• It is an excellent soil stabilizer and is used on dunes, roadside plantings, etc.
• It is also used as a rootstock and in breeding programs, especially with the Japanese plum.
• It is a good dwarfing rootstock for peaches, apricots, and plums.

Precautions

• In excess, however, it can cause respiratory failure? and even death.
• In larger concentrations, however, cyanide can cause gasping, weakness?, excitement, pupil? dilation, spasms, convulsions, coma, and respiratory failure leading to death.
• Some species’ leaves and fruits are poisonous to humans and can cause serious stomach pain? when ingested.

References