Question
Dear Tom,

I bought this house in October.  Luckily it came with a few fruit trees!  I was very excited to see that one of them was a cherry tree. It was full of red cherries and green leaves.  I tasted one and it was awful!  The little old lady who sold it to us said it was the ornamental type .  But so far (its late may in Los Angeles)  it never really had any glamorous flowers,if any, so i wonder why they had it? Then it occurred to me that maybe it is not ornamental, maybe it just doesn't have a similar tree close by?  How do I find out which it is, it does look like any flowers that did flower were white.  But maybe there is a way to tell?
so that leads to my second question.  I read in one of you postings about cutting off a green branch from a fruit tree and trying to root it as a better option to starting from seed. Would that work to give it a mate? Cut off one of its own stems and try to grow it close by? then i would have the right type to pollinate with it?

Thanks!

Rachelle

Answer
Hi Rachelle,
Thanx for your question.  The tree you are describing is probably correctly called an ornamental cherry and it is grown for its looks as opposed to the taste of the fruit as you were able to tell from experiementing with some fruit.  At some point the tree did have to have some flowers or you would not have had fruit.  

Here are some pictures of flowers and fruit from Google Images.
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=ornamental+cherry+tree&ei=M3oUSqPgDZWDlA...

Some cherries are self-fertile (meaning they require no other pollinators) but many are not.  However, obtaining a pollinator isn't going to change the taste of this cherry tree you have.  You could take a picture of the tree or take a branch down to the local County Extension horticultural agent and they might be able to help you identify the tree.

Here's a link to the Los Angeles Master Gardeners
http://celosangeles.ucdavis.edu/Common_Ground_Garden_Program/Master_Gardener_Hel...

Los Angeles County Cooperative Extension
http://celosangeles.ucdavis.edu/

I hope this helps.
Tom