Chinese bush cherry

Prunus japonica, the Chinese bush cherry or niwa-ume, is a small deciduous shrub of the Rosaceae 1–2 m tall, native to central and northern China, Korea and Japan. It produces slender, much-branched, glabrous twigs bearing alternate, ovate to ovate-lanceolate leaves 3–7 cm long with sharply doubly-serrate margins, an acuminate tip and a short petiole; the leaf base often bears a pair of small glands. In early spring before or with the leaves, the plant is covered in pink to nearly white five-petalled flowers about 1.5 cm across, borne singly or in clusters of two or three. The fruit is a globose red drupe 1–1.5 cm in diameter with a smooth thin skin, sour-sweet flesh and a single hard stone enclosing a flattened seed. It grows on sunny hillsides, scrub and forest margins from lowland to about 1700 m.