The Black Cherry, which is a tree of the first magnitude in favorable
regions, is only a middle-sized tree in the New England States. In the
South and West, especially on the banks of the Ohio River, it attains a
very great size, rising sometimes to one hundred feet, according to
Michaux, with a corresponding diameter. It is sensitive to the extremes
both of cold and heat, and to an excess either of dryness or moisture.
In Maine it is only a small tree, being checked in its growth by the
severe Northern winters. Very far south it suffers from the hot and dry
summers, but prospers well in the mountainous parts. It forms immense
forests in many districts of North America, in company with the honey
locust, the black walnut, the red elm, and the oak. It is sufficiently
common in New England to constitute an important ingredient of our wood
scenery, and though indigenous, it is most abundant in lands which have
been modified by cultivation.
This tree differs very obviously in its ramification from the garden
cherry, in which the branches are always subordinate to the trunk, and
arranged in irregular whorls and stages, one above another, so that, if
they were horizontal, they would resemble those of a fir-tree. The Black
Cherry tree, on the contrary, is subdivided in such a manner that the
main stem cannot easily be traced above the lower junction of the
branches, except in those which have grown in a forest. The branches are
spread out more loosely, without the least of any arrangement in whorls,
and their terminations are longer and smaller. The leaves of the two
trees are also widely different: those of the garden cherry are broad,
ovate, rough, and serrate; those of the American tree are lanceolate and
smooth, and almost as slender as the leaves of the willow. The one bears
its flowers and fruit in racemes, the other in round clusters or umbels.
The trunk and bark of the two species are similar, both resembling the
black birch in the properties of their wood and the outside appearance
of their bark. The branches of the Wild Cherry are too straggling and
sparse to make a beautiful tree, and the leaves being small and narrow,
the whole mass is wanting in depth of shade.