When should a serviceberry be pruned?
Prune right after it finishes blooming in spring, not during bloom. Two species-specific traps: it is in the rose family and fire blight susceptible, so cutting in warm wet spring weather opens infection courts, and heading cuts on a multi-stem clump produce a broom instead of a shape — decide early whether it is a multi-stem clump or a single-trunk tree, because converting later costs the crown.
Reading serviceberry before you cut
Cedar-serviceberry, cedar-quince and cedar-hawthorn rusts are the loud problem and the cosmetic one — orange to yellow leaf and fruit lesions in a wet spring, sometimes with gelatinous galls, ugly but survivable. Fire blight is what actually kills it: blackened shoot tips curled into a shepherd's crook with dead leaves still hanging on, which needs cutting 8 to 12 inches back into clean wood with tools sterilized between cuts.
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