Western Sand Cherry is a deciduous small shrub growing from 4 to 6 feet high and spreading just as wide.

Twigs are reddish with small white lenticels. The buds are reddish brown with lighter tips to the scales, and are clustered at the top of old leaf scars. Older stems take on a more purplish color and the whitish lenticels become horizontally elongated.

The leaves are a smooth glossy silvery medium green on top, more pale under giving the plant a gray/green appearance. They are an elongated-elliptic in shape, up to 2 inches long and 1 inch wide, tapering smoothly to a pointed tip, and to a tapered base and a short stalk. Margins have fine teeth, the most acute of the three varieties. There is one main vein with laterals curving toward the tip. There is a pair of long narrow stipules at the base of each leaf.

The inflorescence is a series of clusters of 2 to 4 stalked flowers along the length of prior year twigs, appearing with the new leaves.

The flowers are 5-parted with 5 white oval petals of the corolla that have rounded tips and taper to a narrow base. The calyx has 5 short green lobes with obtuse tips. These lobes are placed alternate to the petals. Stamens are numerous, rising from a yellow-green fleshy ring at the base of the corolla, then exserted from the corolla on pale yellow-green filaments ending in yellow anthers. The style is single, with a blunt knob-like tip.

Fruit: Fertile flowers mature to a medium size (18mm diameter) globose purplish pome that contains one large seed. The fruit can be eaten raw or cooked. It has a sweetish flavor but is astringent. Jelly will retain the astringency. Like all Prunus species pits, these contain hydrocyanic acid and the pits must be removed before use. Fruit matures in mid-summer.

Habitat: Sand Cherry prefers full sun in sandy to sandy-loam soils and tolerates dry to moist conditions. It will tolerate partial shade, but flowering and fruit production will be poor. The root system tends to sucker forming thickets. Established plants are drought resistant. Propagation can be by fall sowing of the pits immediately after removing from the fruit, or by rooting from softwood cuttings taken in summer.

Names: An older synonym for this species is Prunus besseyi L.H. Bailey. The large genus, Prunus, is named after the Latin word for the plum. The species name, pumila, means 'dwarf' as in a dwarf plum. The variety name, besseyi is an honorary for Charles Edwin Bessey (1845-1915), American botanist, professor of botany at Iowa State University and then at the University of Nebraska, author of a number of botany publications and developer of an arrangement of flowering plant taxa based on evolutionary divergence from primitive forms. Eloise Butler considered him “the greatest and most enthusiastic teacher I have ever met.”

The author names for the later plant classifications refer first to ‘L.H.Bailey’ who was Liberty Hyde Bailey (1858-1954) American horticulturist and botanist, editor of numerous works. He concentrated on Agrarian needs, was influential in the development of the Extension System at State Universities and was one of the first to recognize and reintroduce the work of Gregor Mendel. His work was updated by ‘Gleason’ which refers to Henry A. Gleason (1882-1975) American botanist and taxonomist, author of a number of papers on plants of the middle west and co-author with Arthur Cronquist on their major taxonomic system for flowering plants, now widely adopted (the "Cronquist System").

Varieties: Two additional varieties are found in Minnesota. See below. for details.