Bird cherry

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

High

As a honey crop

Minor honey crop — a surplus only locally or occasionally

Which bees, and why

The flowers are open and shallow on a long raceme, which makes them accessible to almost every spring bee and to a great many flies and beetles as well.

Small open shallow flowers with no access difficulty at all.

Worth knowing

A generous spring nectar and pollen source, and worked heavily for the fortnight it lasts.

Flowering

In flower

April to May (northern hemisphere)

A late-spring flow of two to three weeks, later than blackthorn and around the same time as hawthorn.

Growing it

Conditions

Sun or part shade on damp, even heavy, soil. It is fully hardy and tolerates cold and wet far better than most cherries.

Size

8-15 m tall.

Native range

Northern and central Europe and northern Asia, on damp woodland, riverbank and hedgerow.

Suits

Large gardens, Hedgerow, Small gardens

• Suits damp ground and cold northern gardens where sweet cherries struggle.
• Suckers moderately; remove suckers if a single-stemmed tree is wanted.
• Prone to bird cherry ermine moth, which can defoliate a tree entirely in early summer and does no lasting harm.

What it looks like

A small tree with drooping racemes of small white almond-scented flowers up to 15 cm long, quite unlike the tight clusters of other cherries, followed by small bitter black fruits.