Prunus emarginata(Douglas ex Hook.) Eaton

Bitter cherry

WFO wfo-0001006712 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Prunus emarginata, photographed by Trevor Van Loon
fig. a Trevor Van Loon, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-01 / obs. 204486922
Prunus emarginata, photographed by Martin Purdy
fig. b Martin Purdy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204537882
Prunus emarginata, photographed by James H. Thomas
fig. c James H. Thomas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201996398
Prunus emarginata, photographed by Arvel Hernandez
fig. d Arvel Hernandez, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202028292
Prunus emarginata, photographed by Nolan Exe
fig. e Nolan Exe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201437736
Prunus emarginata, photographed by Lyrae
fig. f Lyrae, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198758598
Prunus emarginata, photographed by Darren Oh
fig. g Darren Oh, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 190221974
Prunus emarginata, photographed by dougbrown
fig. h dougbrown, CC0 1.0 / obs. 166122275

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 518 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 518 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 30 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Cerasus arida Greene
  • Cerasus californica Greene
  • Cerasus crenulata Greene
  • Cerasus erecta C.Presl
  • Cerasus glandulosa Kellogg
  • Cerasus kelloggiana Greene
  • Cerasus mollis Douglas ex Hook.
  • Cerasus obliqua Greene
  • Cerasus padifolia Greene
  • Cerasus pattoniana Carrière
  • Cerasus prunifolia Greene
  • Cerasus rhamnoides Greene
  • Cerasus trichopetala Greene
  • Padus emarginata (Douglas ex Hook.) S.Ya.Sokolov
  • Padus prunifolia (Greene) S.Ya.Sokolov
  • Prunus crenulata (Greene) Tidestr.
  • Prunus emarginata W.H.Brewer & S.Watson
  • Prunus emarginata (Douglas ex Hook.) Walp.
  • Prunus emarginata subsp. erecta (C.Presl) Piper
  • Prunus emarginata subsp. mollis (Douglas ex Hook.) A.E.Murray
  • Prunus emarginata var. crenulata (Greene) Kearney & Peebles
  • Prunus emarginata var. emarginata
  • Prunus emarginata var. mollis (Douglas ex Hook.) W.H.Brewer
  • Prunus emarginata var. villosa Sudw.

and 6 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.