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Chokecherries (Prunus virginiana) are an edible wild fruit that have been harvested for millennia, and they were once an important food source for Indigenous people in the Americas. They’re still abundant and incredibly popular with foragers across their range. Learn how to identify chokecherry trees, distinguish them from look-alikes, and use the bittersweet drupes to make jelly, syrup, wine, and traditional dried fruit leather.
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I’ll admit the name “chokecherry” doesn’t exactly get your mouth watering. Anything with “choke” in the name sounds like trouble. The other common names bitter berry and bird cherry aren’t any more appetizing, but chokecherries are not only edible, they’re delicious. The berries can be a bit astringent right off the bush, but that astringency fades away with the proper preparation. (And, as with any wild fruit, some bushes are much sweeter than others.)
Anyone who grew up in the Northeast or Midwest probably tasted somebody’s grandma’s chokecherry jelly, and ambitious grandpa’s had a jug of chokecherry wine squirreled away each year, too.
Chokecherries are in the stone fruit family, along with cherries and plums. Unlike wild pin cherries, which produce individual fruits to be spread by birds, chokecherries produce large fruit clusters for mammalian hands to pick easily.
Chokecherries have evolved alongside small mammals, and they’re hoping to be picked by the handful. Dexterous mammals like raccoons then carefully strip the flavorful fruit away and deposit their seeds along woodland paths.
In times past, chokecherries were an important food source for Indigenous Americans, and pounded chokecherries were one of the three ingredients in pemmican (along with dried buffalo meat and fat), the long-lasting food that sustained the plains Indians. The book Hatchet by Gary Paulsen mentions “gut cherries” growing in the Canadian wilderness, which are most likely chokecherries; an entire generation of readers met chokecherries first through Brian Robeson’s survival story before they ever spotted them on a real woodland edge.
They say a loved child has many names, and chokecherry goes by quite a few. It’s also called Choke Cherry, Bitter Berry, Bird Cherry, Red Chokecherry, Sloe Tree, Chuckleyplum, Western Chokecherry, California Chokecherry, Whiskey Chokecherry, Rum Chokecherry, or Virginia Chokecherry. The French common name is cerisier de Virginie (Virginia cherry).
Chokecherry pairs naturally with the other small wild fruits ripening on northern hedgerows in late summer: hawthorn berries, aronia, rose hips, and wild grapes. Each fall, the foraging tour brings home jars of jelly and bottles of country wine that capture summer’s flavor for the months to come.
Notes from My Homestead
We have several productive chokecherry stands on our Vermont homestead, mostly along the old stone walls and at the edges of the hayfields where the woods thin out. Late August is chokecherry harvest time around here, and the timing matters. If you go too early, the fruit is still red and so astringent it puckers your whole face; wait too long and the birds get there first. The trick I’ve learned over the years is to flag promising trees during bloom in May and then check back every few days starting in early August.
Most years our harvest goes into chokecherry jelly and chokecherry syrup, with the leftovers going into a big batch of chokecherry wine. The flavor reminds me of port wine combined with stone fruit, deep and slightly tannic but lovely with cheese. The pits get composted carefully (away from where the chickens forage), and any imperfect fruit goes to the chicken flock, who tear into them happily and seem to know exactly which ones to leave alone.
What Is Chokecherry?
Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana) is a deciduous shrub or small tree in the rose family (Rosaceae) and the genus Prunus, which also includes cultivated cherries, plums, peaches, and almonds. It typically grows 20 to 30 feet tall, often forms thicket-like clonal colonies through underground suckering, and is one of the most widely distributed wild fruit trees in North America.
The fruit grows in distinctive elongated clusters (botanically called racemes) of pea-sized drupes that ripen from green to bright red to deep purple-black through the late summer. The astringent flavor of unripe and partially ripe fruit gives the plant its common name; even fully ripe chokecherries have a hint of pucker that fades with cooking, drying, or processing.
One subspecies of Chokecherry, P. virginiana var. demissa, is usually called Black Chokecherry and is native to most of Canada and much of the United States. The western form is P. virginiana var. melanocarpa. From a foraging standpoint, all three varieties are used the same way and have the same flavor profile.
Is Chokecherry Edible?
Despite its ominous name, Chokecherry is edible. It earned its name because it is highly astringent and difficult to consume raw. That said, with a little processing, it makes tasty jams, jellies, and wines.
Raw Chokecherry seeds also contain cyanogenic compounds, which can be toxic if consumed in large quantities. It sounds scary, but this is the same chemistry found in apple seeds, peach pits, and almonds. Cooking the seeds renders them safe, and most jelly and syrup recipes strain the seeds out anyway. Some folks believe that drying the berries has a similar effect. Native Americans once relied on Chokecherries for significant nutrition and would simply pound and dry the berries before consumption.
Use your best judgment and caution when processing Chokecherries. Small children may be especially susceptible to the cyanide contained in the raw seed.
While they were historically employed in traditional remedies, Chokecherry’s leaves and bark are also toxic. They contain hydrocyanic acid, also known as prussic acid. Again, there is some debate about whether cooking would render them safe, but the science is still out, and it’s best to err on the side of caution.
While it may be an enjoyable plant for human foragers, Chokecherry isn’t safe for browsing horses, cows, sheep, and other livestock. The toxicity is highest in spring and summer when leaves are young; wilted leaves (after a frost or after a branch breaks) are particularly dangerous because the cyanogenic compounds concentrate as the plant tissue dies. Chokecherry should be removed from any livestock pasture or browse area, and farmers in chokecherry country watch closely for branches that break off into pasture fences.
It’s an important spring food source for pollinators, and the bushes are absolutely covered with nectar-rich sprays of blossoms in season.
Chokecherry Medicinal Benefits
Many indigenous people used Chokecherries in their medicinal practices. Some groups would boil the inner bark into a tea to use as a sedative, appetite stimulant, or to treat sore throats, respiratory ailments, fevers, and diarrhea. They may also have used the bark externally for treating wounds and made cough syrups from the berries.
Colonists quickly adopted Chokecherry for treating malaria, colds, consumption, coughs, burns, and wounds. It was considered one of the most important drugs native to North America and was listed in the 1820 US Pharmacopeia.
More recently, there has been a renewed focus on the traditional Native American preparations of Chokecherry. In 2017, a high school student, Destany “Sky” Pete, of the Shoshone and Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in Idaho and Nevada, tested traditional Chokecherry pudding on uterine sarcoma cells and found that the traditionally prepared pudding had cancer-inhibiting properties.
However, in the modern context, Chokecherry is still widely understudied and undervalued. Little research has been done about Chokecherry’s potential medicinal and health benefits. A graduate student from the University of Saskatchewan, Richard C. Green, analyzed Chokecherry’s physiochemical properties and phenolic composition and found that it compared favorably with blueberry and cranberry concentrates.
Hopefully, researchers will focus more on this potentially helpful and healthy berry in the future.
Where to Find Chokecherry
Chokecherry has an extensive native range. It grows wild throughout most of Canada and down into parts of Mexico. In the United States, it’s more concentrated in northern states, with more scattered populations in southern states. It’s particularly abundant across the northern Great Plains, the Upper Midwest, the Northeast, and the Rocky Mountain West.
Chokecherries will grow in many soil types but prefer moist, well-drained soil. They may grow in full sun or partial shade but provide the most fruit where they receive full sun.
You may find Chokecherries growing along streams, on mountainsides, forest edges, roadsides, and clearings. They thrive in disturbed areas. Some of the most reliably productive stands grow at the edges of old hayfields and pasture lines, in fence rows where birds have planted them, and along sunny trails through mixed hardwood forest.
When to Find Chokecherry
If you know what you’re looking for, you can spot Chokecherry trees year-round, but they’re easiest to identify when they’re in flower or fruiting.
Depending on where you live, you may see Chokecherry blooming in April, May, or June, with the first blooms showing up in warmer, southern climates.
Elongated clusters of green berries follow the white flower clusters.
The berries ripen from green to red to dark purple. In southern areas, the berries often reach their ripe, dark purple stage between June and August. In northern regions, they typically ripen between August and September.
If you want to harvest Chokecherries, you’ll have the best results if you wait until they are fully ripe. Unripe berries are even more astringent. The fully ripe color is a deep, almost black purple, and many foragers wait until the berries have been that color for a couple of weeks before harvesting. The very last harvest window is usually after a light frost, which sweetens the fruit further but also signals that the birds will be moving in fast to take what’s left.
How to Identify Chokecherry
Chokecherry looks like large shrubs or small trees growing in clonal clusters. They tend to have an irregular, horizontal, oval shape and may grow 20 to 30 feet tall. They may reach 10 to 15 feet wide.
You’ll notice elongated, drooping clusters of white flowers in spring or early summer. Later, these flowers give way to clusters of small berries ripening from green to red to dark purple. In the autumn, their foliage changes to beautiful shades of golden yellow, orange, red, or purplish red.
Chokecherry Leaves
Chokecherry leaves are simple, alternate, and elliptic to ovate with sharply toothed margins. Individual leaves are usually 1.5 to 2.5 inches long. They are typically dark green above and gray-green below.
In fall, the leaves change color before dropping and may be golden yellow, orange, red, or purplish red.
Chokecherry Bark
Chokecherry has strong trunks that may grow to 20 to 30 feet tall. The trunk and larger branches typically have gray to black bark with many prominent reddish-white lenticels (corky raised pores) running horizontally across the bark, which is a useful identification feature shared with other Prunus species.
Young slender twigs are often reddish-brown or orangish, with a strong almond or bitter almond scent when scratched (this is a quick field-test for confirming the genus Prunus; almost all Prunus species have this characteristic scent in their twigs and leaves).
Chokecherry Flowers
Chokecherry forms elongated, drooping flower clusters 3 to 6 inches long. The clusters are comprised of 5-petaled, white cup-shaped flowers.
Individual flowers are about ½ inch in diameter and have a sweet, almond-like fragrance that’s distinctive when a stand is in full bloom. The drooping cluster shape (technically a raceme) is one of the easiest ways to recognize chokecherry from a distance, especially in May and June when the woods edge is full of bottlebrush-like clusters of white blossoms.
Chokecherry Fruit
Chokecherry flowers give way to green, pea-sized, round, or oblong fruit. The fruit ripens from green to red before turning purplish-black between June and August in warm southern areas or August through September in northern areas.
When ripe, the fruit is fleshy and ¼ to ½ inch in diameter. Each berry contains a single large seed (technically a stone or pit, since chokecherries are drupes). The fruit hangs in elongated, drooping clusters of 6 to 24 individual cherries on a single stem, which is one of the easiest features for distinguishing chokecherry from related species like black cherry and pin cherry.
Chokecherry Look-Alikes
Several plants share enough features with chokecherry to be worth a closer look, especially when you’re new to identifying the genus Prunus. Most of the common look-alikes are themselves edible (or at least non-toxic), but a few exceptions are worth knowing well before you put any berries in your basket.
Common Buckthorn
Chokecherry is sometimes mistaken for Common Buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica), an invasive shrub that produces dark berries in fall. Buckthorn berries are mildly toxic and act as a strong laxative when eaten in any quantity. Common Buckthorn differs in several noticeable ways:
- Common Buckthorn has spines on its branches.
- Common Buckthorn has smooth, oval-shaped leaves with curved veins that arch toward the leaf tip.
- Common Buckthorn has yellowish flowers (chokecherry flowers are bright white).
- Common Buckthorn berries grow in tight clusters along the stems rather than in the elongated drooping racemes of chokecherry.
- Common Buckthorn berries have three to four seeds inside, where chokecherries have a single stone.
Black Cherry
Another look-alike is another Prunus plant with edible berries, Black Cherry (Prunus serotina). Black Cherry can be distinguished from Chokecherry in the following ways:
- Black Cherry is a tree that can reach 40 to 60 feet tall with a crown 20 to 30 feet wide.
- Black Cherry bark tends to be dark, rough, and scaly on the trunk.
- Black Cherry leaves tend to be narrower and may be narrowly ovate or lanceolate-ovate.
- Black Cherry leaves have rounded teeth on their margins.
- Black Cherry berries are usually larger, ½ to 1 inch in diameter.
- Black Cherry tends to ripen 2-3 weeks after chokecherries.
Both species are edible and can be used the same way, so confusion between the two isn’t a safety issue. Black Cherry is generally sweeter and less astringent than chokecherry, and many foragers prefer it for fresh eating.
Pin Cherry
A third Prunus look-alike is Pin Cherry (Prunus pensylvanica), a small tree that’s also edible. Pin Cherry differs from Chokecherry in:
- Pin Cherry produces individual cherries on long stems rather than the elongated drooping clusters of chokecherry.
- Pin Cherry fruit is bright red and translucent when ripe (chokecherry ripens to deep purple-black).
- Pin Cherry leaves are narrow and lanceolate, more like a willow leaf.
- Pin Cherry trees are short-lived and tend to fruit at a younger age and smaller size.
Pin cherries are also fully edible (and quite tart), so this confusion is a culinary preference rather than a safety issue.
Japanese Honeysuckle
Lastly, Chokecherry fruit can be mistaken for the fruit of Japanese Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica), which has black to dark-purple berries growing in pairs on a vining shrub. Japanese honeysuckle berries are mildly toxic, especially in quantity, and shouldn’t be eaten. The plant differs from chokecherry in a few easy-to-spot ways:
- Japanese Honeysuckle is a climbing vine, not a tree or shrub.
- Japanese Honeysuckle stems are reddish-brown and hairy.
- Japanese Honeysuckle has tubular yellow or white fragrant flowers (chokecherry has small white five-petaled flowers in long clusters).
- Japanese Honeysuckle berries grow in pairs and contain 2 to 5 seeds, not a single chokecherry-style stone.
How to Harvest Chokecherry
Chokecherries are a delicious wild edible, once you know how to prepare them properly. When harvesting, you must wait until they are fully ripe. Pick your chokecherries once they have been a nice dark purple-black color for a couple of weeks. Test ripeness by tasting one before committing to harvest; an unripe chokecherry is genuinely unpleasant, while a fully ripe one is tart but sweet enough to keep eating.
Bring a pair of pruning shears or scissors when you harvest, since the fruit hangs in clusters and clipping the whole stem off saves time at the kitchen table. The clusters store well in a cool refrigerator for up to a week, or freeze beautifully whole (with the seeds in) for up to a year. Frozen chokecherries are arguably easier to process than fresh: the freezing breaks down the cell walls and makes juice extraction faster.
Birds and other wildlife move quickly on a ripe stand, so once the first few clusters turn fully purple-black, plan to harvest within a few days. A productive stand can yield several pounds of fruit in a single session if you get there at the right moment.
If you find a productive stand right at peak ripeness but can’t process everything immediately, freeze the whole clusters in gallon freezer bags. Frozen whole chokecherries can be used in any chokecherry recipe later, and the seeds inside aren’t a concern as long as the recipe uses cooking, juicing, or straining to remove them.
Ways to Use Chokecherry
Once you’ve got a good supply of Chokecherries, you can start processing them. Most people choose to mill out the seeds, but cooking the seeds also renders them safe for consumption.
The berries’ unique flavor lends itself to sweet and savory dishes. Some classic ways to preserve Chokecherries are jam, jelly, syrup, or wine. Chokecherry juice or syrup makes an excellent base for various sauces, including barbeque sauce and marinades for meat, fish, and vegetables.
As Chokecherries made up an important part of many Native American groups’ diets, they often preserved huge quantities, typically by pounding and drying them into patties. (Drying the pounded seeds in the sun also detoxifies them.)
Foraging author Samuel Thayer prefers a slightly different approach in The Forager’s Harvest: he stores fully ripe chokecherries in the refrigerator for a day or two before straining and turning the fruit into unsweetened fruit leather. The brief refrigerator rest, he notes, allows some chemical change in the fruit that significantly reduces astringency without the need for sugar. He extracts the pulp from the seeds without cooking by using a food strainer with the tension spring removed. I’ve tried with the tension spring left in, and it clogs the whole thing into a mess, so be sure to remove the tension spring.
Sarah from Root’s School just dries them whole and enjoys them as a crunchy snack. There’s some evidence that the heat from a dehydrator is sufficient to neutralize the toxin in the seeds, and the pit becomes crunchy inside, a bit like a hackberry.
Little is known of Chokecherry’s medicinal value. While historically, Native Americans and early colonists used the bark in medicinal preparations, it isn’t recommended today.
However, you can experiment with incorporating the vitamin and antioxidant-rich fruit into teas, cough drops, cough syrups, or other medicinal applications.
Chokecherry Recipes
I have a full list of chokecherry recipes, but my favorites are wine, dried patties, jelly and just eating them dried as a snack.
Here are a few more recipes to get you going:
- Preserve your harvest with our simple recipes for Chokecherry Jelly or Jam.
- Skip the pectin and make a simple chokecherry syrup.
- Turn your harvest into a wild foraged wine with this chokecherry wine recipe.
- Try the traditional Dried Chokecherry Patties (Legren), a Native American recipe for preserving chokecherries.
- Learn to make Chokecherry Pudding with the First Nations Development Institute.
- If you’re looking for something more savory, try this recipe for Grilled Trout with Chokecherry-Herb Sauce and Sauteed Oyster Mushrooms from the Mill City Farmers Market.
- For the adults, try a fun foraged twist on the classic Cherry Bounce (a Rye cocktail) from the Backyard Forager.
Chokecherry FAQs
Yes, chokecherries (Prunus virginiana) are edible. The flesh of fully ripe chokecherries is tart and slightly sweet, though astringent enough that most people prefer them cooked into jelly, syrup, wine, or fruit leather rather than eating them raw. The seeds inside contain cyanogenic compounds (the same compounds found in apple seeds and almonds) and shouldn’t be chewed or swallowed in quantity. Cooking, drying, and most standard processing methods either remove the seeds or render them safe.
The flesh of fully ripe chokecherries is not poisonous and has been eaten safely for thousands of years. The seeds, leaves, and bark contain cyanogenic compounds that can be toxic in significant quantities, but standard food processing (cooking, juicing through a strainer, drying) renders them safe. The toxicity is highest in wilted leaves (after a frost or branch break), which is why chokecherry trees are removed from livestock pastures. Always strain or remove the pits before consumption, and use chokecherry products in moderation.
Chokecherries ripen from green to red to deep purple-black, and are fully ripe when they’re a uniform dark purple-black color and slightly soft to the touch. In northern North America (Vermont, Minnesota, Montana, Canada), chokecherries usually ripen between mid-August and late September. In southern areas, they may be ripe as early as June. Wait until the berries have been their final purple-black color for at least a week before harvesting; underripe chokecherries are extremely astringent.
Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana) and black cherry (Prunus serotina) are closely related species in the same genus, and both are edible. The main differences: chokecherry is a small shrub or small tree (20 to 30 feet tall) while black cherry is a large forest tree (40 to 80 feet); chokecherry fruit grows in elongated drooping clusters while black cherry fruit hangs in similar but slightly looser clusters; chokecherry ripens in August-September while black cherry ripens 2 to 3 weeks later; black cherry fruit is generally larger and sweeter. Both can be used the same way in jams, jellies, syrups, and wines.
No. Chokecherry pits contain amygdalin, a cyanogenic compound that releases hydrogen cyanide when chewed or digested. The compound is the same one found in apple seeds, peach pits, and almonds, but it’s present in higher concentrations in chokecherry pits. Eating a few accidentally swallowed whole pits is unlikely to cause harm (they pass through whole), but chewing or grinding them can release significant cyanide. Cooking neutralizes the compounds, which is why cooked chokecherry products (jam, syrup, wine, jelly) are safe even if traces of seed material remain. Native American traditions of pounding and sun-drying chokecherry pits use similar denaturing principles.
Did you find this Chokecherry foraging guide helpful? Tell me in the 📝 comments below how you use chokecherries on your homestead!
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Only pick and eat them when they’re so dark that they’re almost black. That’s when they’re ripe, leaving them sweet with very little tartness
When juicing the chokecherries, can you use imperfect cherries? For example there is a hole in the cherry. Which I am assuming has been done by an insect. Is it safe to use these cherries as well?
There is a certain kind of fly that lays its larvae in the cherry fruit and they then hatch inside of it. I would personally want to verify if there are any worms inside the fruit before using them for juice. With that said, I don’t think these particular pests are harmful to humans when accidentally ingested. You will just have to use your own judgement on this one.
I noticed you refer to chokecherries as shrubs. I was in my garden today and a tree branch from the edge of the woods grew over the garden. The leaves, fruit and seed pits fit the description, and it had a pleasant smell when crushed, but this is, like, a 20 foot tree. Does this sound like a chokecherry or a look-alike to you?
According to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center a Chokecherry tree is “A large, deciduous shrub or small understory tree, choke cherry grows 20-30 ft. tall and often forms thickets.”
Here’s another way to use chokecherries….syrup. Delicious on pancakes, waffles, french toast and vanilla ice cream! MMMMMM!
Yes! So yummy!
I froze my harvest from last year as whole fruit (seeds intact). Do you think this was a mistake leaving the seeds in? Or can I thaw and proceed with any of your chokecherry recipes?
I think you’ll be fine to thaw and proceed.
Thanks! I’ll give it a try. I’m leaning towards a gallon of wine
You’re very welcome.
I love reading your information. But I wish you could make a printable page with just the main pertinent information. Then I could put it in my herbal folder. Never know when the internet will not be here… Just a thought.
Thanks for that suggestion. If I find an article that I want to keep that isn’t printable then I will often copy and paste the information that I want into a word document and then either save it or print it.
Because of the Chokecherries medicinal properties, is it possible to create a tincture (?) using vodka? If so, have you ever done this or how should it be done? I read on a different site where chokecherries have medicinal uses.
Yes, you can create a tincture, but I’m not sure if you should use the pits in the tincture as I don’t think the alcohol would denature their toxic compounds. If you do, I’d do it by juicing the fruit and then preserving with alcohol. That said, I’m not really sure if the fruit juice is medicinal in that way?
I’d look into what parts of the plant are medicinal. I’ve read things that say the berries are beneficial, but only if eaten in the traditional way (ie. the pounded and then sun-dried chokecherry patties), since the pits are the source of the medicine at least according to that source (can’t find it now).
Other sources use the bark for cough medicine, in place of black cherry bark. In that case, you wouldn’t be tincturing the fruit, but instead the bark.
Anyhow, think about what you’re trying to get out of it and make sure a tincture is the right preparation for the benefits you seek. I don’t know all that much about the benefits of chokecherry medically, so I can’t really advise you here.
Hello,
I’ve not read of anyone making chokecherry syrup. I grew up in MT and my grandmother and mother made a fabulous syrup that was most often served with buckwheat Pancakes. I remember the process was similar to what’s been described for Jelly making, i.e., cooking the berries and straining out the seeds, but I don’t know what happened next. The syrup was not overly sweet, and had a bit of a sour kick to it, as I recall, but so flavorful and delicious with pancakes of any kind, especially those made with buckwheat flour.
We just happen to have a whole post about chokecherry syrup right here. https://practicalselfreliance.com/chokecherry-syrup/
I actually came to your site hoping to find out if the blossoms are edible. I wanted to put some of the flowers in my salad, like I do with dandelion heads (and leaves) as well as my rose petals, when they are in season.
I don’t believe so. From what I have found in my research, all parts of the tree with the exception of the cherry flesh contain hydrocyanic acid which is poisonous.
If you have your eye on a brush that you’re hoping will ripen a bit more, buy a couple of those netting from the dollar store and cover the bush, tying it together at the stem. I do this with my Saskatoons in the yard, as well as the sunflowers (birds and squirrels).
My chokecherries are 2 big trees and one bush. Only the birds and I eat them, so there is plenty to go around, and no trouble waiting until they are fully ripe : )
Yes, netting can definitely be a great option.
thank you for the best information I have found about astringency in choke cherries. that is what got me to your site
You’re welcome. I’m so glad you’re here, Betty!
Thanks for the mention of steam juicers! They are wonderful for fruits with lots of seeds or strongly sour skins. I steam juiced small wild type plums. For 6 quarts of very flavorful juice I only added 2 cups of sugar and some salt, which helps mellow the sour. The juice is still too sour to to drink straight but can be mixed in drinks our used in jello salads with milder fruit. I like it over ice cream. Steam juicing, I think, cuts the sour in half without losing flavor.
Thanks for the tips. Steam juicing is the way to go, for sure!
Can I freeze juice (minus sugar) and make wine at a later date?
Sure can!
I tried to make something out of my chokecherry harvest for the first time; I’m wondering if I didn’t use enough sugar. The syrup/loose jelly mixture I got from it still has a slight astringent/pucker aftertaste. My question is this normal for chokecherries? Can I get rid of that pucker by adding more sugar next time? Or will all chokecherry products still have that hint of astringent taste no matter how much sugar you add? Great read btw!
I’d guess you harvested them a bit early? Were they all the way black (or really close to it)?
I made chokecherry jam and jelly this year, no pectin added just a bit of lemon juice and using a citrus seed pectin technique. The jelly wasn’t bitter at all, and I used 2 cups sugar to 3 cups juice, along with the juice of a lemon. The jam, with the skins pulverized into it and just the seeds filtered out was quite bitter.
One thing I’d suggest is to make sure you don’t press the chokecherries in the jelly bag, since more of the bitter is in the skins. I used a steam juicer, so no issue there.
If the birds are picking the chokecherries off the tree, is that a sign that the fruit is ripe enough to make jelly?
As soon as the animals start picking them, they won’t last long. I just went to harvest the bushes I’d been watching all year, checked them earlier in the week and decided they needed a few more days…my mistake. Everyone was pulled when I went back this weekend. It’s hard to find a bush where the animals don’t harvest them all before they’re fully ripe. Around here, I’ve found a few lone bushes along the roadside that got fully black this year…but most years I harvest them a bit underripe and then allow them to ripen about a week on the counter.