Can You Get Seedless Cherries

Can You Get Seedless Cherries?

No, you can not get pitless cherries naturally – only in the processed form are they seedless.

Nobody can deny the sweet taste of fresh cherries, yet, people often forget and bite hard on those pesky seeds or pits. Can you get cherries that are pitless?

It would be great to freely eat cherries without having to worry about getting rid of the seeds. But, are there seedless cherries?

You can get seedless cherries, but it’s not the way you think. There’s no natural or artificial way to grow cherries without their seeds. However, in some manufacturing processes, the seeds are removed using special machines before we buy them at the store.

Intrigued? Stick around for more details.

Can You Grow Seedless Cherries?

Cherries belong to the family of stone fruits. That means they naturally grow with a seed, pit, or stone inside. A few other examples of stone fruits are plums, peaches, and olives.

There is currently no stone fruit that naturally grows without its stone. As for the existence of human-modified stoneless fruit, the answer is still no!

In 1914, the American botanist and plant breeder Luther Burbank managed to create partially stoneless cherries.

However, until the day of writing this article, it’s not yet possible for scientists to create an entirely seedless cherry without compromising the whole structure of the cherry.

Are Maraschino Cherries Pitless
Are Maraschino Cherries Pitless

Yet, we can find a type of cherries in the market known as maraschino cherries that have no seeds in them. So, how is this possible?

What Are Maraschino Cherries?

A Maraschino Cherry is a processed cherry that typically has its stone removed along with soaking in preservation syrup so it can be bottled and sold commercially.

Is a Maraschino Cherry a Real Cherry?

Yes, maraschino cherries are regular or real cherries they have been processed in a factory to remove the stone.

It’s not uncommon for a few maraschino cherries to lose their seeds on their own without the manufacturer’s intervention. But, it’s also easy to get rid of the seeds while processing them.

So, how do manufacturers remove the seeds? We’ll find out in the next section.

How to Get the Seeds Out of Cherries

It’s not just maraschino cherries, but most cherries hardly hold on to their seeds. If you grow them on your farm, you might notice that a few of them have an empty core.

That doesn’t mean they grew without seeds, it just means that they lost them somehow along the way.

How To get The Pits Out of Cherries
How To Get The Pits Out of Cherries

People take advantage of this and use it to remove seeds from the cherries. There are two ways to do this:

Using a Rod

In this method, you can force the cherry to squirt out the seed using a small rod or a straw.

All you’ll have to do is hold the cherry in place, then push the rod in a straight line toward its center. This forces the cherry to pop the seed from the other side, leaving a tiny hole behind.

You could easily use this method at home.

Using a Blade

Here, you get to place the cherry on a cutter to be pushed toward a blade that cuts the seed out of it. This leaves an X-like mark where the seed has exited.

Most food-processing factories tend to use this method.

Using a Cherry pitter is another way.

Why Do Cherries Have Stones

The majority of seedless fruit on the market was the result of a chance mutation. One or a few genes are altered, resulting in a sterile but especially delicious plant. Farmers propagate these crops by grafting them onto each other indefinitely. For example, the blood orange comes from an ancient plant that mutated long ago.

In either case, either that magical mutation has yet to be discovered and harnessed for cherry production, or it’s impossible.


Some scientists have tried, but not successfully to grow a cherry without a stone in the middle.

However, some do postulate that through Polyploidy it may be possible to one day have a cherry without a stone.

But for now, there is no wonderful fruit without the seed.