How does a black cherry hold up in a storm?
Listed as susceptible in the urban ice-storm tables and repeatedly named across multiple ice-storm studies as one of the worst performers of any eastern hardwood, because the wood is brittle and it drops whole scaffold limbs under load. In central Indiana that makes black cherry one of the first species on the ground after a quarter-inch ice accumulation, and it typically tears out at a branch union rather than breaking mid-limb.
What pruning can and can't prevent
The pruning job on black cherry is usually black knot removal, and it has to be done properly: cut 6 to 8 inches below each black crusty gall in the dormant season, haul the prunings off site or burn them, and sanitize between cuts so the saw is not seeding the rest of the tree. Dormant timing matters for a second reason — cherry seals wounds poorly and growing-season cuts invite borers and canker fungi.
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