I can verify the cherry darkening phenomenon, from a dining table my folks had custom-made, many years back when I was a teenager, from 40-odd year old air-dried cherrywood logs (that's how long the wood had been drying in a barn before it was bought and cut into planking and dried for a few more years by the cabinetmaker). The table-top is just natural, unstained, sanded and oiled solid cherry, joined together from several pieces a few inches wide each to form an unembellished flat slab with a beautifully varied knurly grain. The color initially ranged, in different parts of the wood, from almost maple-light to pale pink to light reddish brown, but the man who made it told us it would darken continuously over the years, getting redder as it went, and that's exactly what it's done. It now looks much more richly colored than right after it was made, and has only been ocassionally wiped down with teak oil using 0000 steel wool for cleaning. The expansion leaves, stored underneath inside the mechanism and not exposed as much to the air and light, are now definitely lighter-toned than the regular top. (I have to add, though, that this wood looks nothing like anything I've seen labelled 'cherry' on a speaker finish, which is usually just an innocuously straight-grained and uniformly light tan wood with some mild streaking at best, next to which this table would seem a different and quite exotic species. As I remember, according to the maker, this appearance in cherry is hard to come by, and requires the tree to have been very old. Additionally, only heartwood was used.)