There are only a few instances in the ancient historical record concerning cherry trees. This absence in the record perhaps resulted in the fragile nature and perishability of the fruit, unlike the fruit from the apple tree. There are strong suggestions that the cherry tree originated in the territories of Asia Minor near the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Other suggestions that the cherry trees were used in the Greek and Roman cultures come from literary historians, and it appears that cherry wood from the trees of cherry was important in many professional applications for the ancients.

Among the fruit seeds that were sent in 1628 to the settlement at Plymouth, Massachusetts, by the Massachusetts bay Colony were cherry, peach , plum, filbert, apple, quince, and pomegranate and “according to accounts, they sprung up and flourished.”

William Bartram found bird cherry, Prunus padus, growing near Augusta, Georgia in 1773 as reported in his book, Travels, when he was taking an inventory of plants growing in the South after the Spaniards abandoned and ceded the land to the English.

Luther Burbank, two centuries later, believed that the bird cherry should be incorporated into the parentage of future cherry hybrids, because it was the most cold hardy cherry known; with its heavy bearing characteristics and its immunity to most insect and disease problems of the cherry trees already in commercial pipelines, it was the hardiest cherry tree yet.

In 1847, Henderson Lewelling brought to Oregon in a covered wagon “cherry trees, apples, pear, plum, and quince.”

Luther Burbank, in his extensive book, Fruit Improvement in 1922, combined characteristics from the Sand cherry tree, Prunus besseyi, with the American plum, Prunus chickasaw, and the Japanese plum, Prunus triflora, that ripened in California around mid-August. Burbank described the fruit as deep crimson in color, transparent flesh, rich sweet flavor, juicy and firm with a strong resemblance of the parental form of the American plum, Prunus chickasaw. This cherry-plum hybrid was able to withstand the cold and rigorous climatic conditions, even to the Dakotas.

Professor N.E. Hansen of the South Dakota Experiment Station developed and improved the Sand cherry, Prunus besseyi, that was marketed as the “Improved Dwarf Rocky Mountain Cherry,” with fruit growing as large as the Richmond cherry. Luther Burbank argued in his 1922 book, Fruit Improvement page 149, that this Sand cherry tree was more truly a plum tree.

Cherries are usually marketed with the stem still attached to the fruit. When canned or preserved, the stems are customarily removed from the cherry. Hybridizers such as Luther Burbank concentrated on improving several characteristics that were important in marketing the fruit: the size, color, flavor, and sweetness. Burbank produced one cultivar so rich in sugar and it hung on the tree, instead of the rapid decay, after ripening on the tree as experienced with most cherry cultivars.

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