Wild cherry

Prunus serotina

Rosaceae

Black cherry of eastern woods — a cough-bark folklore, and a tree whose wilted leaves are a livestock warning.

Inner bark as a traditional cough syrup. Wilted leaves and pits contain cyanogenic glycosides — do not make tea from fallen leaves or crushed pits.

Parts used: Inner bark · Fruit (pits out)
Traditional notes: Dry cough folklore · Kitchen jelly from fruit
Grow · USDA 6b: Tree, USDA 3–9 A nursery tree, or a pit after a winter outside. You are planting for a decade. In work: Jun · Jul · Aug
Harvest: Fruit when black; bark only from prunings. Do not strip a standing wild cherry.

Fence it from cattle if leaves will wilt in a paddock.
The cough syrup in the cupboard is the honest bark.

Safety

Wilted-leaf tea Pit tea Girdling a wild tree for bark

Lore

The American cough drop is this bark in sugar. Eclectic physicians wrote of Prunus virginiana and P. serotina almost interchangeably. Cabinetmakers prized the wood. A wilted branch in a hayfield is a different, uglier story — cyanide is the same family trick as bitter almond.

The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.