Sweet Cherries

A cherry is the fruit of many plants of the genus Prunus and is a fleshy drupe (stone fruit). The cherry fruits of commerce usually are obtained from a limited number of species such as cultivars of the sweet cherry Prunus avium. The name cherry also refers to the cherry tree, and is sometimes applied to almonds and visually similar flowering trees in the genus Prunus, as in "ornamental cherry", "cherry blossom", etc. Wild cherry may refer to any of the cherry species growing outside of cultivation, although Prunus avium is often referred to specifically by the name "wild cherry" in the British Isles.

Many cherries are members of the subgenus Cerasus, which is distinguished by having the flowers in small corymbs of several together (not singly, nor in racemes), and by having smooth fruit with only a weak groove along one side, or no groove. The subgenus is native to the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, with two species in America, three in Europe, and the remainder in Asia.