Someone told me that all parts of this plant were poisonous but I
thought it was only the wood and leaves. Can I eat the cherries or
not? I have a huge tree on my property now and I want to eat some of
the fruit!

Prunus serotina? The cherries are edible...

Dave

"george" wrote in message
...
Someone told me that all parts of this plant were poisonous but I
thought it was only the wood and leaves. Can I eat the cherries or
not? I have a huge tree on my property now and I want to eat some of
the fruit!

From: george ge
Newsgroups: rec.gardens

Someone told me that all parts of this plant were poisonous but I
thought it was only the wood and leaves. Can I eat the cherries or
not? I have a huge tree on my property now and I want to eat some of
the fruit!

The fruit of the choke cherry and wild black cherry is edible. But not the
pits. May be somewhat tart but that can vary from year to year. makes a great
cherry sauce for desserts

We make cherry jelly & jam every year. Yes all parts are poisonous except
the pulp. I assume you're talking about the wild cherry that has very small
fruit in large clusters on med to large sized trees (Prunus serotina, I
believe). When ripe they're easy to strip from the cluster and then squeeze
the juice out for your jelly. There's not enough pulp on them to consider
eating fresh. But if you do, it might be wise not to swallow too many pits.
I assume you're not going to eat the bark and leaves or make them into tea.
I don't believe that would be a wise move. Although there are herbalists who
sell it....
Gary

"george" wrote in message
...
Someone told me that all parts of this plant were poisonous but I
thought it was only the wood and leaves. Can I eat the cherries or
not? I have a huge tree on my property now and I want to eat some of
the fruit!

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 00:15:44 GMT, "V_coerulea"
wrote:

We make cherry jelly & jam every year. Yes all parts are poisonous except
the pulp.

I used to eat them from the tree when I lived in Norfolk, VA,
where there were many of them. The fruit is somewhat
bittersweet, but when it is fully ripe, I found it delicious.
I spit out the pits.


Mike Prager
Beaufort, NC (on the coast in zone 8a)
(Remove symbols from email address to reply.)

Yes all parts are poisonous except
the pulp.

I used to eat them from the tree when I lived in Norfolk, VA,
where there were many of them. The fruit is somewhat
bittersweet, but when it is fully ripe, I found it delicious.
I spit out the pits.


Mike Prager



Or you wouldn't be with us today, I assume.
zemedelec

pamfree (Zemedelec) wrote in
:

Yes all parts are poisonous except
the pulp.

I used to eat them from the tree when I lived in Norfolk, VA,
where there were many of them. The fruit is somewhat
bittersweet, but when it is fully ripe, I found it delicious.
I spit out the pits.

Or you wouldn't be with us today, I assume.

unless you chew up the pits, they aren't too likely to harm you. the
human digestive system passes them through. we just don't have enough
acid to dissolve the outer shell of the pit.
but the pits aren't very tasty & spitting pits is kind of amusing...
better to spit than swollow in this case
my goats & llamas love the bark & leaves, and according to my vet a
little is ok *unless* it is at all wilted. wilted cherry is *very*
poisonous to livestock. she also says wilted maple leaves are bad. any
idea why that would be?

lee
--
It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate
between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital
connection between them. -Leo Buscaglia, author (1924-1998)

In article , llama mama
wrote:

pamfree (Zemedelec) wrote in
:

Yes all parts are poisonous except
the pulp.

I used to eat them from the tree when I lived in Norfolk, VA,
where there were many of them. The fruit is somewhat
bittersweet, but when it is fully ripe, I found it delicious.
I spit out the pits.

Or you wouldn't be with us today, I assume.

unless you chew up the pits, they aren't too likely to harm you. the
human digestive system passes them through. we just don't have enough
acid to dissolve the outer shell of the pit.
but the pits aren't very tasty & spitting pits is kind of amusing...
better to spit than swollow in this case
my goats & llamas love the bark & leaves, and according to my vet a
little is ok *unless* it is at all wilted. wilted cherry is *very*
poisonous to livestock. she also says wilted maple leaves are bad. any
idea why that would be?

lee

The leaves of native red maples (Acer rubrum; leaves of other maple
species are totally harmless) are toxic to about 50% of horses, who show
symptoms of anemia within a day if browsing a lot of the fallen leaves:
yellow mucus in the eyes, brown urine -- death results VERY commonly if
those first signs are evident. Most dangerous time is in the autumn, when
leaves accumulate of the ground.What the toxin is no one has identified --
it is probably some kind of aliphatic proton -- & I've never heard of it
effecting any other animals, but the result of eating autumn leaves for
horses is very overt for the large percentage who are sensitive to it.
Because leaves browsed early in the year do not seem to harm horses, to
the observer it looks like only "wilted" autumn leaves harm horses, but it
seems to me more likely that the unidentified toxin is something that is
in autumn leaves only, period, wilted or not. For fallen leaves that have
aged a full month, these can no longer harm horses & have been safely used
as silage.

I've heard a hundred times that wilted cherry leaves, mountain mahagony
leaves & wilted black locust leaves (sometimes wilted apple & peach leaves
are tossed onto the list) are the most dangerous, & looked into it once
upon a time because it sounded like such an old wives tale. But sometimes
old wives tales turn out to be true. This is not true of leaves two or
three weeks after leaf-fall, but leaves if bruised, damaged, or wilting,
or experiencing sudden frost, these do become more toxic, chiefly around
autumn. Frost, storm-damage, or even pruning can cause the glucosides in
the leaves to break down into prussic acid (hydrocyanide). This toxin
dissipates rapidly, but it is momentarily quite toxic, & the prussic acid
also smells very nice, a bit like an almond joy bar rolled in dirt. Many
ruminants can't resist it when they smell such nice scents & compare that
to boring old straw. It is apparently harmless to deer, elk, or goats, but
for cattle, sheep, & llamas it can be fatal.

But each day more & more of the prussic acid dissipates. "Old" (partially
decayed) cherry leaves have been safely used as silage for sheep & llamas.
Old cherry leaves have even been included in commercially processed feeds
(mainly inthe cheapest brands), & the prussic acid is totally absent.

There is more prussic acid in the leaves of cherries that grow in shade
than those that grow in bright sunlight. There is much more in black
cherry, laurel cherry, chokecherry, & portugal cherry than in cultivated
cherries. There is more in the cherry pits than in the leaves, but the
cherries are safely eaten by ruminants because the pits pass through the
system undigested & so release no toxins.

When our friends' alpacas broke through a fence to clean off all the lower
limbs of a half-dozen (cultivated, not wild) cherry & peach trees, the
owners were worried sick their alpacas would get sick or die, but not a
thing happened. In the majority of cases the toxicity is at such a low
level as to be harmless to all animals, even in wild cherries. But as it
would be impossible to know the levels without almost daily testing, or a
perfect daily awareness of stress factors on the trees, wild cherries &
locusts are generally just kept well away from the fences of pastures.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/