Prunus cerasus
Sour cherries are smaller, softer, and much more acidic than familiar supermarket sweet cherries. They are a separate species, not simply sweet cherries picked before ripening.
Northeast notes
Sour cherry trees are naturally smaller and generally more winter-hardy than sweet cherry trees. Maine growers still contend with tender flower buds and spring freezes, but cultivars such as North Star, Meteor, Mesabi, and Evans can reach into Zone 4 conditions.1
A useful oddity
Many sour cherries are self-fertile, so one tree can set fruit on its own. Many sweet-cherry cultivars are self-incompatible and need compatible pollen from another cultivar—an important biological difference hidden behind two similar fruits.2
Connections
Cherry is a stone fruit in the rose family with plums and peaches, and a more distant relative of apple, hawthorn, and strawberry. Montmorency became the dominant North American sour-cherry cultivar as commercial orchard production specialized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.3
Footnotes
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University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “Types of Fruit Trees,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩
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University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “What Are Some Best Practices When Planting a Cherry Tree?,” 2023. ↩
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National Park Service, “Orchard History: Orchard Specialization and Industrialization, 1881–1945,” 2022. ↩