Chokecherry

General Information

• Plants: Shrubs or small trees up to 25 feet tall. Leaves alternate, simple, egg shaped, having serrate margins with the teeth directed towards the leaf tips. A pair of reddish glands is found at the leaf base or adjacent petiole.
• Flowers: White, arranged in long racemes of fifteen to thirty flowers.
• Fruits: Berries, each has a single, bony pit; dark red, purple, to nearly black when fully ripe.
• Flowering Season: April to July.
• Habitat/Range: Streams, canyons, draws, and woodlands from Newfoundland to British Columbia and south to North Carolina and California.¹

Blackfeet Ethnobotany^*

by Darnell and Smokey Rides At The Door

In the Blackfeet language, the word for chokecherry is Pak Kii p. The translation means 'smashed,' derived from the mashing method used most often to enjoy the fruits. Mashed chokecherries are a delicacy during early Spring ceremonies, around the turn of the New Year for the Blackfeet. Though the center seed is large, when mashed correctly, it can yield a tasty, softened mixture. The gathered, grape-like clusters make it easy to gather.

The berries are high in nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. They are often used to make cakes for winter storage, soups, or trail mix when mixed with suet or fat.

However, the berry is not the only part of the plant used. The strong, hard, straight branches are often used for lance shafts, arrows, pins and pegs for lodges, tripods, backrests, snowshoe frames, cradle board frames, and digging sticks.

From a medical standpoint, the chokecherry has been used to cure what is colloquially known as 'Rocky Mountain quick steps,' or diarrhea.²

From the Journals

by H. Wayne Phillips

Lewis learned herbal medicine from his mother, an herbal healer, therefore the chokecherry was a familiar plant to him. On June 11, 1805 Lewis was leading a small party searching for the “great falls of the Missouri,” when he fell ill.³

I was taken with such violent pain in the intestens that I was unable to partake of the feast of marrowbones . . . . I directed a parsel of the small twigs [of chokecherry] to be geathered striped of their leaves, cut into pieces of about 2 Inches in length and boiled in water until a strong black decoction of an astringent bitter tast was produced; at sunset I took a point [pint] of this decoction and abut an hour after repeated the dze by 10 in the evening I was entirely relieved from pain and in fact every symptom of the disorder forsook me; my fever abated, a gentle perspiration was produced and I had a comfortable and refreshing nights rest.

The next morning Lewis took another portion of the chokecherry decoction and hiked 27 miles up the Missouri. On June 13, 1805, after another hike of fifteen miles, he finally reached the "great falls," which he described as a "sublimely grand specticle."

Two specimens of chokecherry, both collected on the return trip from the Pacific Ocean, were collected on the Lewis and Clark Expedition and still exist in the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. One was collected on May 29, 1806, near present-day Kamiah, Idaho, and the other on August 10, 1806, near present-day Williston, North Dakota. In his journal for June 29, 1806, Lewis wrote a detailed botanical description of chokecherry:

The Choke Cherry has been in blume since the 20th inst. . . . a single flower, which has five obtuse short patent white petals with short claws inserted on the upper edge of the calyx. . . . the stamens are upwards of twenty and are seated on the margin of the flower cup.

On August 11, 1806, Peter Cruzatte accidentally shot Lewis. Lewis wrote on August 12:

as wrighting in my present situation is extremely painful to me I shall desist until I recover . . . however I must notice a singular Cherry which is found on the Missouri in the bottom lands about the beaverbends and some little distance below the white earth river.

This would be Lewis's last journal entry before the Expedition concluded. His final journal entry of the expedition shows his dedication to botany as he concludes with a lengthy botanical description of pin cherry, Prunus pensylvanica, which he contrasted with the more familiar chokecherry:

it rises to the hight of eight or ten feet seldom puting up more than one stem from the same root not growing in cops as the Choke Cherry dose. . . . the fruit is a globular berry about the size of a buck-shot of a fine scarlet red.⁴

Additional Information: Though the berries the chokecherry trees produce can be bitter when eaten before ripeness and/or raw, they lose their bitterness when cooked. This is what makes them favorable for jams, preserves, pies, etc. Before fruits reach full maturity by late summer, the leaves on the tree are poisonous if consumed. The berries are eaten by many animals small or large.⁵

^*While traditional medicine is still practiced in many cultures including the Blackfeet culture and has many uses, please do not consume any plant material without consultation of a health professional.