I was asked via PM a while ago about Prunus Serotina (black cherry). Here's my response:
"I got fed up with Black Cherry. It behaves very weirdly when containerized. And FWIW, I've only seen a handful of the billions of them around here worth collecting. Twisty-turny trunks are easy to find, but they tend to have no taper and monotonous vanilla, gun metal colored bark. I have found a very VERY, VERY few that have extremely nice taper and amazing, cracked, pine-like bark. Those are the ones I worked with. Once you have seen a black cherry with plated, old bark, you look at all the others as not worth the trouble
And they are considerable trouble.
Note I said "worked" with. They are easy to collect, but as you have seen, once in a container, they start getting weird.
Like any fruit tree, they are susceptible to fungus, borers and insect attacks. My oldest one was a great little tree, until the borers moved in. They chewed on it for a decade and killed off large sections of it. It was also targeted every year by tent caterpillars (just like every other black cherry near me). Those damn things could defoliate it in an afternoon while I was at work. Happened a couple of times. That defoliation didn't really increase ramification or produce smaller leaves. It mostly just weakened the tree, killing off twigs and branches.
The tree rooted like mad, but the roots it put out in bonsai soil where extremely fine and tiny. So fine, that they would break off in handful sized chunks at repotting. that made repotting a problem, as those chunks fell away easily.
I won't keep another one unless I can find another exceptional trunk like the one I nursed for 15 years. They are a pain in the ass. Better species out there."
I'd also add to this that pruning them after they've started putting on extension growth can cause dieback on branches, so hard pruning has to be done in early spring before bud break. Also, the tendency for die back from trimming growth means the tree pretty much should be left to its own devices until the following spring to avoid losing branching. While this quirk may be variable, and results may vary, I learned not to mess with trimming in the spring lest the damn tree drop an entire branch...
Additionally, they also "bleed" gummy messy, gross-looking sap from large wounds. That production of gummy mess can quadruple if the weather is wet. The tree can develop large mounds of gum in a couple of days, which I think is aimed at repelling insect invaders like borers. Be prepared, the first time you see it, it looks like some kind of fungal apocalypse has taken over your tree...It isn't and the tree doesn't seem to be any the worse for it, but if borers caused it, they will remain, only further up inside their burrows.
