# Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana) *Choke cherry; *Prunus virginiana* of Linnaeus; *Prunus obovata* of Bigelow and *Cerasus virginiana* of De Candolle; *Prunus demissa* in the West; *Padus virginiana* in some modern papers* **Known today as.** *Prunus virginiana*, the chokecherry of North America: a tall shrub or small tree of forest margins, fence-rows, and highways, with racemes of white flowers and a fruit that ripens from bright red to almost black and furs the mouth until it is fully ripe. Kind: Plant Poisoning: Cyanide from the kernels (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/cyanogenic) Toxic: yes > **Caution.** Prussic acid in the bark, leaves, and kernels: the leaves poison cattle, and goats fed the leaves and flowers for a month took harm to the brain and the thyroid. ## What was it used for? The bark, bitter and astringent, with that of the wild black cherry as a tonic, febrifuge, and sedative, ten to forty grains of the powder in infusion or tincture, never boiled; the astringent fruit with cider in domestic medicine; the fruit itself a staple food of the northern Indians and sold by the quantity in the markets of Canadian cities. ## What does modern science say? The bark, Rafinesque knew, holds prussic acid, and the leaves poison cattle. Goats fed ground chokecherry leaves and flowers for four weeks, at a dose reckoned as 2.5 milligrams of hydrogen cyanide per kilogram a day, showed clinical signs in two of them, vacuoles in the thyroid laid to thiocyanate, and lesions of the midbrain laid to cyanide. The fruit is rich in phenolics and in the anthocyanin kuromanin, which freezing preserves and hot-air drying wastes; and among eighty-five Indigenous remedies of the Canadian Prairies tested against MRSA, the chokecherry extract was active only under conditions imitating a wound. ## Pharmacognosy and toxicology - **prussic acid**: hydrogen cyanide, freed from the bark, leaves, and kernels; the goats’ dose was reckoned in it - **tannin**: with gum and mucus in the bitter, astringent bark, by Rafinesque’s account - **kuromanin**: the anthocyanin of the fruit, measured with its phenolics and flavonoids - **malvidin and pelargonidin 3-O-glucosides**: the anthocyanins whose accumulation turns the leaves purple-red **Mechanism.** Cyanide: in goats fed the leaves and flowers for four weeks, the spongiosis and spheroids of the midbrain were laid to cyanide and the vacuoles of the thyroid to its metabolite thiocyanate. The bark’s old use as sedative and febrifuge went with the prussic acid, which heat drives off. **Dose.** Ten to forty grains of the powdered bark, by Rafinesque, who found it brought the pulse from 75 to 50; the goats had 2.5 milligrams of hydrogen cyanide per kilogram a day in ground leaves and flowers. **Standing.** Never official in its own right: King’s dismissed the prunin made from it. The modern literature is on the fruit’s antioxidants, the leaves’ pigments, the plant’s cyanide, and the antimicrobial promise of its extract. ## What lore surrounds it? The name is in the mouth: a fruit that furs the tongue to the roof of the mouth, as an early New England colonist complained. Its Latin name wandered for a century, Linnaeus’s *Prunus virginiana* being borne by the wild black cherry of the pharmacopoeia until the botanists gave it back to the chokecherry. Sargent found that it early drew the colonists’ attention but did not reach European gardens until the middle of the eighteenth century; that a yellow-fruited form was found at Dedham in Massachusetts; and that the inner bark’s strong, disagreeable smell tells it in winter from the wild black cherry, whose bark smells aromatic. The modern plant is an ornamental valued for leaves that turn purple-red, a colour a 2021 study traced to the glucosides of malvidin and pelargonidin. ## What did the older authorities say? **C. S. Rafinesque.** Counts *Prunus virginiana* with the black cherries as active medicine: the bark bitter and astringent, holding prussic acid, tannin, gum, and mucus; tonic, febrifuge, and sedative, very useful in fevers, agues, hectic fever, dyspepsia, and chronic asthma; ten to forty grains of the powder, in infusion or tincture, heat driving off the prussic acid; the bark of the root stronger; it brings the pulse from 75 to 50, and in large doses is narcotic. “Leaves poison cattle, berries intoxicate birds, used for cherry bounce, baneful: kernels equal to bitter almonds.” **King’s American Dispensatory.** Explains that the wild cherry of the pharmacopoeia, *Prunus serotina*, “was long confused with and went by the name of Prunus virginiana, which properly belongs to the Choke cherry”; describes the chokecherry as a shrub of six to ten feet, common in the United States and Canada and, by Sargent’s reckoning, “the most widely distributed of any American species of tree,” its fruit “bitterish, and exceedingly astringent” and often employed with cider in domestic medicine; and dismisses the “concentration” called prunin or cerasin, made from both cherries, as an inefficient agent seldom used. **Charles Sprague Sargent.** Describes it in the *Silva* as the most widely distributed North American tree, growing within the arctic circle and from Labrador across to the Pacific and south to Georgia, Texas, and northern Mexico; its fruit austere and astringent in early autumn, but sweet and edible later; gathered in Canada in great quantities, sold in the markets of the large cities, eaten by the French Canadians, and formerly an important food of the northern Indians. A handsome plant in flower, “but it is generally disfigured by the Black Knot, which makes it a dangerous neighbor to orchards of cultivated Plum-trees.” **William Wood.** In *New England’s Prospect*, as Sargent quotes him: the cherry trees “yeeld great store of Cherries, which grow on clusters like grapes; they be much smaller than our English Cherrie, nothing neare so good if they be not very ripe; they so furre the mouth that the tongue will cleave to the roofe, and the throate wax horse with swallowing those red Bullies (as I may call them), being little better in taste. English ordering may bring them to be an English Cherrie, but yet they are as wilde as the Indians.” ## Sources - Rafinesque, C. S. (1828). *Medical Flora, or Manual of the Medical Botany of the United States of North America*, vol. 2, “Prunus,” pp. 253–254. Internet Archive, b21468710_0002. - Felter, H. W., & Lloyd, J. U. (1898). *King’s American Dispensatory*, “Prunus Virginiana (U. S. P.)—Wild Cherry,” with its Related Species. As transcribed at Henriette’s Herbal Homepage, henriettes-herb.com. - Sargent, C. S. (1892). *The Silva of North America*, vol. 4, “Prunus Virginiana. Choke Cherry,” pp. 41–43 and Plate CLVIII. Internet Archive, mobot31753000329240. - Soto-Blanco, B., Stegelmeier, B. L., Pfister, J. A., Gardner, D. R., & Panter, K. E. (2008). Comparative effects of prolonged administration of cyanide, thiocyanate and chokecherry (*Prunus virginiana*) to goats. *Journal of Applied Toxicology* 28: 356–363. doi:10.1002/jat.1286 - Téllez-Pérez, C., et al. (2020). Antioxidant content of frozen, convective air-dried, freeze-dried, and swell-dried chokecherries (*Prunus virginiana* L.). *Molecules* 25: 1190. doi:10.3390/molecules25051190 - Li, X., et al. (2021). Molecular and metabolic insights into anthocyanin biosynthesis for leaf color change in chokecherry (*Padus virginiana*). *International Journal of Molecular Sciences* 22: 10697. doi:10.3390/ijms221910697 - Rieger, C. D., et al. (2024). The antimicrobial potential of traditional remedies of Indigenous peoples from Canada against MRSA planktonic and biofilm bacteria in wound infection mimetic conditions. *Microbiology Spectrum* 12: e0234124. doi:10.1128/spectrum.02341-24 --- *Chokecherry.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-03. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/chokecherry Historical description, not medical advice.