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Characteristics
 Family-
Rosaceae--The Rose Family
- Origin
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Native NC
- Plant Description
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Evergreen tree
- Coastal Ecology
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Prunus caroliniana is the Carolina cherry-laurel. Carolina cherry-laurel has been used as a landscape tree, shrub and hedge since colonial times; it is found at Williamsburg, The Elizabethan Gardens and Tryon Palace in historically accurate landscape designs. Once native only to the coastal fringe from central North Carolina southward, Cherry-laurel is now naturalized inland as far as Raleigh due to cultivation and subsequent dispersal of the seeds by birds. Prunus caroliniana is one of the most common components of the barrier islands' flora, found in association with the evergreen oaks on the frontal dunes, in the inland pine forests, on disturbed sites and adjacent to fresh water swamps. Flowers of Carolina cherry-laurel are creamy white and in upright clusters. Fruits of cherry-laurel are green turning to dark blackish with a pointed tip. The leaves of cherry-laurel are alternate, elliptical and with either entire or toothed margins. The leaves bear a pair of small, greenish to brownish, round glands on the undersurface down near the petiole, seen in the center of this photograph. Cherry-laurel is the only evergreen of the coast bearing such glands.
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