Didn't want Chills excellent logic to get lost in the drain cycle here. If you get a self-fruitful sweet cherry, you can't lose. It's like type O Blood. A universal donor. It will pollenize whatever you've got planted and itself, too, provided that the bloom times generally overlap. For the east coast, where sweet cherries are challenging anyway because of the summer humidity which causes cracking and other disease issues, there has been the suggestion that Lapins is a good choice (I'm in the high desert, so I'm only repeating what others have said.) For the record, on those occasions when Jellyman has childed me for something or other, my reaction is to feel kind of honored. Few are more knowledgable--not to mention, generous with their expertise--than Don and I am grateful for his participation here, curmudgeonliness (sp?) and all. Don

In my experience, Evans/Bali is a great cherry for folks in zones 5 & colder - but if you're in zone 6 or warmer, don't bother with it. Photos konrad has posted from his zone 4 setting make it look phenomenal! Have had it here for nearly 20 years (finally pulled it out a year or so back, but there are still a couple of suckers that popped up 30-40 ft away). Yes, it ripens later than Montmorency, but that just allows more time for curculio and other pests to hit it, and it was never as productive as Montmorency. Don't know that I ever saw more than a half-dozen fruits that were worth bothering to pick, and they weren't nearly as plump and tasty as those from the nearby Montmorency. Grew out some row-run Nanking seedlings a number of years back - I'd purchased them for use as dwarfing rootstocks for plums - tiny little fruits with minimal pulp surrounding the pit. Native P.serotina(black cherry) produces larger fruits with more pulp. Maybe I had a less-than-stellar strain, but my impression was, "Why bother with it?" Kinda made me think maybe these bush cherries were for folks in the frigid northland who don't have enough growing degree days to grow a real fruit (tic). lol

Looks like a peach to me - and to many people on Fruits and Orchards where this question was also posted.

If you haven't been spraying those cherries at least every two weeks with pesticide, each one will have a little white worm inside by the pit. At least that's what happens here in Utah and many other places. I just harvested my first really good crop from my Lapins cherry trees, and they're wonderful! But because I only sprayed once about a month ago (it's been a very busy spring with a new baby in the family and a big vacation a few weeks ago!) about 10% of my cherries have worms. So, we're cutting most of them open before we eat them and discarding the wormy ones. But since nothing beats that great feeling of popping a whole cherry in your mouth and letting the juice squirt all over your tongue, I can't resist just eating some of them without checking! A little worm won't kill me, I suppose! But anyway, I'm not sure you really want a tree that's half Kwanzan and half wild cherry! I'd probably cut off the wild branches and buy a new cherry tree to plant somewhere else nearby. I do have a related question, though: I have four Kwanzans and one is nearly dead. From what I've observed in my garden, the ones getting less water are healthier. They're in an area with a gravel mulch and they only get water from a drip system. The one dying is in an area that is sprinkled with a groundcover around it. Is that your observation -- that these trees are sensitive to watering and like to be a little dry? Also, my dying one has suddenly shot out a bunch of suckers at the base -- so, should I be pretty certain it's on wild cherry rootstock? Would that look attractive as a shrubby, multi-trunked tree if I let these suckers grow and cut out the mostly dead Kwanzan from the middle of the clump?