Gina,
In Door County, cherries are either "Sweet" or "Sour". Most are "Sour" or "Pie Cherries".
Groundcherries are neither of these. Groundcherries are either Physalis heterophylla or Physalis subglabrata. They are low growing perrenials. The fruit is toxic till ripe. My grandmother made a jam or jelly from them. My stomach is turning just thinking about it. Many people like them. I've had them come up in my garden, from compost from the community pile. Actually I read Tomatillos are a type of Groundcherry.
Growing Cranberries requires a bog and flooding. You may want to do some research of that.
Nanking Cherry or Prunus Tomentosa is a hardy shrub, that also produces a red fruit. The fruit is also edible in pies or Jams. It is not related to either of the others.
Hope that helps, Scott

You are possibly looking for one or both of these small trees. Tart but if you add enough sugar the pies are outstanding.

If you want seed I could gather some for you next summer, or cuttings.

Big Dummy

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Prunus virginiana
Choke Cherry is a shrub or small tree that reaches heights of up to 25 feet. It is often crooked and irregularly shaped. The flowers, which appear in spring are found in long clusters. The fruit can be anywhere from red to almost black in color and hang in clusters. Choke Cherry is very shade intolerant and usually one of the first to colonize disturbed sites. It prefers moist soils and is an edge plant, often found at field edges, along roads and fences.
Wildlife uses:
Choke cherry is a very valuable food source for many animals. Deer, elk and other big game animals browse on the leaves and twigs. Bears love the berries as do grouse, quail, and many other species of birds. Small groups of Choke Cherry provide excellent thermal cover for large and small animals as well as nesting and hiding cover for birds.
Reclamation uses:
Choke cherry is very hardy and can be very useful in erosion control in open areas. Small thickets of Choke Cherry along small streams makes ideal habitat for numerous species of animals and birds, and helps stabilize the bank. The shade also helps cool the water and provides resting areas of many animals looking to escape the heat.
Backyard uses:
The Choke Cherry is a very hardy plant that can be grown in your yard. The long clusters of blossoms in the spring can be beautiful. The berries, although too bitter for eating, make excellent jellies and syrups. Birds will be attracted to the berries as they ripen, creating an excellent natural habitat in your yard.
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Prunus pensylvanica
Pin cherry (Prunus pensylvanica) is a small common tree inhabiting a great variety of lands in the northern part of the United States and Canada. It is sometimes called fire cherry for its value as a reforesting agent after forest fires. It forms pure stands that provide shade for seedlings of slower growing species, then dies off, making way for the new trees. Another common name, bird cherry, reflects the prevalent use of the fruit by birds as food. It is also called northern pin cherry, wild red cherry, and pigeon cherry. The soft porous wood is of little commercial value.

Native Range
Pin cherry grows from Newfoundland and Labrador west to southern Mackenzie District and British Columbia in Canada. Scattered stands are found south in the Rocky Mountains to Montana and Colorado; southeastward from the Black Hills of South Dakota to Iowa, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, northeast to New England. In the Southeast its range follows the Appalachian Mountains south to northern Georgia and eastern Tennessee.

Pin cherry flowers from late March to early July. Flower buds are formed in August or September of the preceding year. In Warren County, PA, flowers appear from May 1 to May 15. The perfect flowers are white and 12 to 16 min broad with long pedicels; they are borne in corymbs or umbels and expand with the leaves. The globose fruits ripen from July to September, depending on locality. They are light red, 5 to 7 min in diameter, and have thin, acid flesh and subglobose stones 4 to 5 mm long. Fruiting occurs as early as age 2 in natural stands in Pennsylvania.

I have very fond memories of picking wild cranberries with my family in a boat on a little lake in northern Wisconsin in 1971. I saved those berries in my freezer for many years, just using them for cranberry nut bread at Christmas.
I grew up in the woods. Pin cherries and choke cherries are for the birds. They are very tart and small with a big seed. I made jelly with them just once to say I did it. Mixing cherries with apple and other fruit. They are nice trees because they are the first to bloom in early Spring. Tiny white flowers that drift sweet fragrance in the air.
I also have fond memories of getting large tins of tart cherries from Door County that were shipped frozen to grocery stores in the area. We would thaw them out and can them. One quart would make a pie.
My son and I made wild elderberry jelly this Fall. All of the grandchildren really like it. We also made blackberry & blueberry mix pie and blackberry and apple mix pies. Picked the blackberries in the woods. FUN! Trick is to find the berries that are not under electric lines or by the road so they don't have chemicals sprayed on them.
Do any of you know about wild plum trees in WI. I would like to find a few of them!
Cold Winter~ looking forward to Summer~ JoAnn

I remember reading that cranberries do not need a bog to grow. In fact the cranberry growers grow them in fields which they flood at harvest time (that's why it is called a bog). The fruit floats making harvesting on a large commercial scale easier. However the fields are not flooded while they are growing. So if you don't mind hand picking you should be able to grow cranberries.

Hi,

Which makes better jam (etc.): chokecherry or pin cherry? And is it true that you shouldn't plant a chokecherry near a prunus avium (sweetcherry), as chokercherry (p. virginiana) is the main host for x-disease - that it will spread to the sweetcherry easily?

Here's another native cherry,they are better tasting than choke or pin cherry,they go fast once they're ripe.I think the pie cherry grown in Door Co and home orchards is the one you want.Anyway here's a discription of black cherry.
Black Cherry , a rapidly growing woodland tree common throughout all of Ohio, is often found in open fields and previously harvested forests. Its beautiful, fine-grained, orange-brown to mahogany-colored heartwood ranks second only to Black Walnut as the ultimate choice for making solid wood furniture, interior trim, and high-quality veneer. Its small fruits are relished by birds and mammals as a food source in late summer. This tree is named for its ripened black cherries as well as its black-gray, flaky mature bark, which looks like black cornflakes pasted on the trunk of the tree.

A native of eastern and midwestern North America, Black Cherry is a pioneer invader tree in open fields or woodlots, and as such can become a "woody weed" as an aggressive sapling. In youth, it displays a symmetrical, often pyramidal growth habit, but it often divides into several upright branches due to storm damage and assumes an irregular shape as it matures. Also known as Wild Black Cherry, this tree may grow to 60 feet tall by 30 feet wide (or larger) when it is found in an open field. As a member of the Rose Family, it also is related to orchard trees (Apples, Plums, Peaches, Apricots, Cherries, Pears, and Almonds) as well as to Strawberries, Roses, and Blackberries, among others.

Planting Requirements- Black Cherry quickly invades a variety of sites due to its prolific fruit production and the resulting distribution of its seeds by birds and mammals. It prefers deep, moist, rich, well-drained soils of variable pH under full sun to partial sun conditions, but tolerates relatively dry, poor soils as well, with a reduced growth rate. It grows in zones 3 to 9.

Potential Problems - Like many members of the Rose Family, Black Cherry is beset with pest problems (the most serious being tent caterpillars, borers, scales, and aphids), and also has some diseases (primarily leaf spot and trunk canker). Abundant seedlings may arise in recently disturbed open areas and along fencerows, creating a weedy thicket of saplings in just a few years. Occasional storm damage occurs to the upper branches of this fast-growing tree due to its relatively weak sapwood.

This is another native cherry,they are great fresh off the tree but a little small to collect for a pie.

lp

Has anyone here tasted pincherry or chokecherry jelly?

I'm thinking of growing one of the two for jelly. If chokecherry, my concern is that it may die of x-disease and spread that to the sweetcherry tree i have.

I'm also concerned about growing pincherry on a site that only gets 6 hours sunlight and this only from the south (not east or west).

Here in Eastern WI Pin & Choke cherries grow like weeds.Choke is very tart,it makes your mouth dry up instantly,seeing that you would have to pick a lot of those little cherries to get any juice,I'd opt for the Pin cherry.4-5 years ago a little seedling started in a flower bed in a good location for a small tree, so I left it grow.It is now almost 20 feet tall and the last 2 years produced many cherries.Now as to it's proper ID I'm not sure.Rather than explain I'll go take a picture and post it here today yet.

If you can find a seedling I'd thnk 6 hrs of light might be enough.I'd be willing to send you some seeds if you want to grow your own.

lp

I know this is late in responding but I just found this thread.

njbiology, as a kid in northern WI, we regularly made pin cherry and choke cherry jelly. We combined the juices in equal parts with crabapple juice which gave it a brilliant, lovely color. It took a LOT of sugar, needless to say, as the juice of the cherries and the crabs are quite sour, but no pectin was needed for the jelly to set. We found it quite funny (my sisters and I) to label the jars as Choke-Apple.