Does cherry tree bear fruits?

Does the cherry bear fruits that is along side of the roads and in the parks?
If it does who picks the cherry?

It depends on the tree variety. Many of the decorative cherry trees in Japan develop some small types of fruit that is barely edible and is not harvested. Some varieties do not develop fruits, at all, I believe.

Only the agricultural cherry tree varieties develop edible fruits. However, you won't find these in city parks and along city streets.

if you don't see any berries after flowering afterwards, they are ornamental trees (non bearing fruits).

Most of cherry trees along side of the roads or in the parks are Somei-yoshino, Prunus yedoensis. They don't bear perfect fruits because they are hybrid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prunus_%C3%97_yedoensis
(All description of this article of Wikipedia is not correct though most of descriptions are correct: What birds eat eagerly is nectar, not fruits.)

Wild cherries like Yamazakura, Prinus jamasakura, are sometimes planted in garden. They bear perfect fruits. But the fruits are poor and not delicious.
So we import cherry fruit from U.S.

So we import cherry fruit from U.S.

About 40% of cherries consumed in Japan are imported (almost all imports are from the USA). The rest is domestically produced, especially in Yamagata Prefecture.

Really? Import from US? that explains why we don't see any good ones here, it'll all being exported. Trader Joe's here in the US used to import cherries (dark cherries) in frozen form from Peru but no longer.

As mentioned, the typical "cherry blossom" trees do not produce edible fruit. At least no one is interested in picking them. Those tiny fruits just drop to the ground like all the other flowers and leaves and gets sweeped away either by wind or brooms.

As for edible cherries, the Japanese consumers consider that "American Cherry" and the ordinary "sakuranbo" are two different things. The latter is more common and quite popular.

As for edible fruit from trees in public, probably the most typical ones, at least in Honshu, are the ginkgo nuts (we call them "gin-nan"). In autumn, locals go to parks and streets to pick up the shelled nuts that have fallen from the trees. We roast them and then eat them with salt, or cook them to make other dishes.

Just for reference:
http://www.kudamononavi.com/zukan/cherry.htm

Interesting about the ginkgo nuts; that brings me onto follow-up question: Those persimmon / kaki trees that you come across in the middle of the woods (not in gardens, of course), are they owned by people or can they be picked. When hiking around Tawarayama Onsen, we came across a few kaki trees bearing fruit and we had no idea if we could pick them or not, see here for a photo I took: http://hoshisato.aminus3.com/image/2009-02-20.htmlhttp://hoshisato.ami...

Hoshisato,

Let us make this clear. Picking "up" objects that dropped to the ground and picking "off" fruit from branches are two different things.

Almost all trees in Japan belong to someone, whether it is the landlord of the woods or the municipal. So technically speaking, you're not supposed to pick fruit, or flowers or branches for that matter, directly from the trees.

But now that you mention it, I do recall a neighbor climing a tree and picking loquats (biwa) from the branches and giving them to everyone watching. This neighbor lived in a house in front of the tiny land where the tree stood, so I suppose he new that the tree had been abandoned for years and that the fruit will always end up messing the streets unless someone picks them fresh and eats them.

Like biwa and unlike ginkgo nuts, kaki that has dropped to the ground are usually no longer edible. Actually, you never know if the ones on the branches are either, because a lot of kaki are "shibu-gaki" which is very bitter. To be precise, shibu-gaki can become even sweeter than usualy kaki if picked and preserved correctly, but then you'd have a problem with that picking issue.

The best way to eat fresh kaki is to make a friend who has a kaki tree in his/her yard. Either way, if someone picks too much kaki from the woods, the crows will lack food and come to your rubbish collection to messes it up.