IMO American Cherry is the best all round hardwood with which to learn furniture making. Here's why,
-reasonably stable
-kind to your tools and reasonably easy to cut and plane without tear out
-strong enough for all furniture applications including chairs
-tight grain which makes for crisp joints
-very easy to mark out clearly with pencil or knife
-very widely available in both sawn and PAR boards, and mid priced for a quality hardwood
-available in a good range of thicknesses (many new woodworkers overlook this and then get stuck if they suddenly need 75mm stuff for table legs and or 50mm stuff for desk legs and chairs)
-reasonably homogenous so a board from one Cherry tree will usually be a reasonable colour match to a board from any other Cherry tree (see finishing).
-takes glue and fastenings well
-stands up very well to sunlight, i.e. won't bleach out in a sunny room
-gives you a decent chance of discovering one or two figured boards of Curly or Rippled Cherry if you regularly buy sawn boards
The biggest downside with American Cherry for many woodworkers is finishing, Cherry has a reputation for blotchiness. However, there are strategies for dealing with this, but even if you just use an oil finish (which will tend to exacerbate blotchiness) then time is the great healer. Very few other timbers patinate as quickly as Cherry, five years even in a fairly dark room and Cherry will have matured to a rich warm colour with the blotchiness and any colour variation between boards receding to invisibility. Another issue is that there are very few timber yards who stock "boules" or "flitches" of waney edged American Cherry, i.e. the full sawn log which allows you to select sequential boards from the same tree. However, by the time you've progressed to the stage where this becomes a concern you'll have probably figured out who those specialist timber yards are, or you'll have a repertoire of alternative timbers for when sequential boards becomes an issue.
Good luck!
