Choke cherries are out here now. I've heard of folks making choke cherry wine by burying a bottle with cherries, sugar, etc. They are tart though.
The choke cherries here are the size of small blueberries. The pits take up a bit of the fruit. There are recipes for cherry jelly and preserves I found on the net.
Most of them are down and the leaves are down too. Still a few though with the fruit. Animals check it several times each day. We've never considered making jam or eating the berries as they are not that good tasting.
I picked these two small branches today at my brothers house. The first one is what we call choke cherry. This second branch from a tree right next to it has similar sized fruit but all are darker. The leaves are stout, not slender. The fruit clusters are right at the main stems, which I found odd. I would like to identify it. I did not try the fruit.
I googled wild black cherry but didn't see anything that looked like the bottom pic. Nothing out here looks like that either.
fishingpol I found this picture and wondered if this was more like what you found? PRIVET berries - poisonous berries of this shrub are only mildly poisonous to humans (but eating them is still not recommended), has purple to black fruit
We have a long privet hedge on our property line with the neighbors. The fruit and leaves are a lot smaller then the tree I am trying to identify. They make an excellent living fence though. Thanks for looking though.
Makes me real curious as to what they are. I agree that the dogwood tree pic seems to be the closest.
