Are all cherries edible?

[Tufty]

Are all cherries growing on all trees likely to be found in the UK edible?

[echinosum]

I'm not aware of any of them being poisonous, but many of them don't taste nice, especially the fruit of ornamental species.

But you may have to be a little careful about what you mean by cherry. The term cherry covers a number of species, being a particular subfamily of the prunus genus.

a list of about 40 species.

There is also Prunus laurocerasus, cherry laurel, a very common evergreen hedging plant, which although a Prunus and called a cherry, isn't strictly speaking a cherry. I've always thought of this one as being poisonous, but on checking just now apparently you can even eat the fruit of this one, even though the rest of the plant is poisonous, though whether you'd want to eat it is another matter. But it is very similar to, and often confused with, Prunus lusitanica, whose fruit is rather doubtful, but usually tastes sufficiently horrible that you probably wouldn't eat it in error.

And there is also Prunus cerasifera, the cherry plum, which a plum rather than a cherry. Which is delicious.

[Tufty]

I don't know if I have put this reply in the right place. These forums aren't all that easy to use, until you know how. Anyway, thank you for the reply.

It was about a cherry tree in a friend's garden. It looks like any other free-standing cherry tree, not in a hedge and not ornamental, and he was just letting the fruit fall and rot, so I asked him why he wasn't eating them, then thought "oops".Maybe I shouldn't just go around saying you can eat all sorts of cherries.

I think I'll tell him to try one next year. I'm assuming you can also eat any sort of ordinary looking plum fruit too. I do and I'm still here.

ech> I'm not aware of any of them being poisonous, but many of them don't