Prunus avium is a deciduous tree growing to 5–25 metres (16–82 feet) tall,[4] with a trunk up to 1.5 m (5 ft) in diameter.

[citation needed] Prunus avium is native to Europe, Anatolia, Maghreb, and Western Asia, from the British Isles[14] south to Morocco and Tunisia, north to the Trondheimsfjord region in Norway and east to the Caucasus and northern Iran, with a small isolated population in the western Himalaya.

[citation needed] The leaves provide food for some animals, including Lepidoptera such as the case-bearer moth Coleophora anatipennella.

[12] In one dated example, wild cherry macrofossils were found in a core sample from the detritus beneath a dwelling at an Early and Middle Bronze Age pile-dwelling site on and in the shore of a former lake at Desenzano del Garda or Lonato, near the southern shore of Lake Garda, Italy.

[12] The species has also escaped from cultivation and become naturalised in some temperate regions, including southwestern Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the northeast and northwest of the United States.

[18] Cherry wood is also used for smoking foods, particularly meats, in North America, as it lends a distinct and pleasant flavor to the product.

[13] Wild cherry is used extensively in Europe for the afforestation of agricultural land and it is also valued for wildlife and amenity plantings.

Pliny grades them by flavour, including dulcis ("sweet") and acer ("sharp"),[30] and goes so far as to say that before the Roman consul Lucius Licinius Lucullus defeated Mithridates in 74 BCE, Cerasia ... non-fuere in Italia, "There were no cherry trees in Italy".

assumed a western Asian origin for the species based on Pliny's writings, but this was contradicted by archaeological finds of seeds from prehistoric Europe.

Evidence of consumption of the wild fruits has been found as far back as the Bronze Age at a Crannog in County Offaly, in Ireland.

[31] Seeds of a number of cherry species have however been found in Bronze Age and Roman archaeological sites throughout Europe.

In 1882 Alphonse de Candolle pointed out that seeds of P. avium were found in the Terramare culture of north Italy (1500–1100 BC) and over the layers of the Swiss pile dwellings.

[32] Of Pliny's statement he says (p. 210): Since this error is perpetuated by its incessant repetition in classical schools, it must once more be said that cherry trees (at least the bird cherry) existed in Italy before Lucullus, and that the famous gourmet did not need to go far to seek the species with the sour or bitter fruit.De Candolle suggests that what Lucullus brought back was a particular cultivar of P. avium from the Caucasus.

The cultivated variety was reintroduced into Britain by the fruiterer of Henry VIII, who brought it from Flanders and planted a cherry orchard at Teynham.