April 25, 2023. Here are two rare large single blossoms, both sometimes carrying some extra petals. ‘Mikuruma-gaeshi’ has been featured here before, but this photo is especially nice, in that you can see the darker pink buds, still a lot of pink in the flowers, and the very occasional extra petaloid on one of the flowers. Well, and some dead leaves, but the beauty of the flowers is winning out.
The ‘Ojochin’ below is even more rare locally, but it may make a come-back since this cultivar was included in the VCBF plant sale a few years ago, clones from this tree at the Japanese War Memorial in Stanley Park. When flowers open, they can be closer to the colour of the ‘Mikuruma-gaeshi’ above and also have some extra petals, so can be hard to distinguish from that. These flowers are even larger than on ‘Mikuruma-gaeshi’. The flower buds generally hang down to match the translation of their name – “large paper lantern”.
April 21, 2023. Double blossoms today! Still not the ubiquitous late-season ‘Kanzan’, which are biding their time. It’s hard to beat the beauty of these dark purplish-red ‘Takasago’ buds set against the riot of colour in the double pinky-white blossoms. The densely packed flower clusters suffer from an air circulation problem in our rainy climate, making the trees not all that healthy.
But flowers don’t need all that colour to be stunning. Much more common around here are ‘Shirotae’, referring to a kind of white cloth in Japanese. Buds become white before they open. The green leaves often emerge with the flowers. These blossoms are fragrant, smelling of almonds. These are often planted in groups, making the fragrance all the more noticeable.
April 20, 2023. Today we’ll do rare single pink blossoms.
These Schmitt cherry flowers are so small, on trees so tall, that they’re usually missed being noticed at all. This photo is from six days ago at VanDusen Botanical Garden, a colder Vancouver neighbourhood, so these flowers were still fresh and pink. By now, they are probably white and even easier to miss seeing.
We only know two locations for ‘Choshu-hizakura’, beautiful trees with petals often edged in a darker pink, accompanied by bronze leaves.
‘Mikuruma-gaeshi’ flowers look similar to the ‘Choshu-hizakura’ above, but are not as intensely coloured, and the trees are more sparsely branched and not nearly as hefty or healthy. Both cultivars have occasional extra petals. This is the first cultivar this season on which we have seen green leaves with pink flowers.
April 17, 2023. Our popular widely planted ‘Akebono’ trees are starting to fade, and it’s not quite time yet for the even more widely-planted ‘Kanzan’ trees, so it’s time for us to notice some of the rare gems. Here are yet more single-whites, flowers with just five petals.
Notice how smooth the petal edges are on the Oshima-zakura above. Now check out the jagged petal edges on this ‘Washi-no-o’. It’s name means “eagle’s tail”. These flowers are also fragrant.
‘Tai-haku’, the “great white cherry”, are trees with substantial broad-spreading limbs when they are allowed the space to grow to their potential. The flowers are themselves of great size (for a cherry) – they can be up to 6 cm across, and the petals are quite rounded, making the flowers look even larger, particularly as they are bracketed by shiny bronze leaves (the leaves here have just emerged; check back in a week or so for a better photo).
April 12, 2023. Pink blossoms today, on weeping cherry trees. “Shidare” (drooping) in Japanese cherry blossom names is used to describe the tree form called “weeping” in English.
So, ‘Beni-shidare’ can be described as the Red Cascade, which is much more poetic than Red Weepings and more in line with how Taki-zakura was named, the Waterfall Cherry of Miharu that is a 1,000 year-old ‘Beni-shidare.’ Certainly none of Miharu’s visitors would think of weeping.
Here are ‘Beni-shidare’ flowers, single blossoms (five petals).
Where this large tree is located on East Culloden Street in Vancouver, right next to it, and of similar size, is a ‘Yae-beni-shidare’, with double pink flowers – “yae” refers to the double flowers.
April 11, 2023. More single white blossoms. Here are two cultivars that are often confused, and another that could cause some confusion were it more common. ‘Somei-yoshino’ is not so common in Vancouver, but it’s the most popular cherry in Japan and is the one planted at the tidal basin in Washington, DC and at the Quad at the University of Washington in Seattle. The single white flowers are not more than 3 cm across and hang on sparsely hairy stems.
Very popular in Vancouver are ‘Akebono’, with several block-long plantings forming an arch over the street. This tree is in the same species as ‘Somei-yoshino’ (Yedoensis). The flowers are slightly larger than ‘Somei-yoshino’, are more pink at peak bloom, and their stems are less hairy. Some flowers exhibit an extra small petal in the centre, which is never the case for the other two cultivars featured here.
‘Umineko’ or ‘Snow Goose’ are separately named cultivars with the same parents. We’re pretty sure no-one can tell them apart. These trees start upright; the branches eventually spread out but curve back inward at the tips. The flowers are smaller than the cherries shown above, are pure white with petals so round that they overlap to form large stars. Starting now, leaves will appear with the flowers.
April 9, 2023. It was several years before our Cherry Scouts found ‘Afterglow’ trees. They were all listed as ‘Akebono’, and indeed they are a different cultivar of the same Prunus yedoensis species, and they bloom at roughly the same time. They have a similar habit (shape), but the flowers are smaller and much more pink. The petals are round enough to overlap. Thanks to Anne Eng for this photo.
Douglas Justice, Associate Director, Horticulture & Collections at UBC Botanical Garden, and Wendy Cutler, VCBF Cherry Scout Co-ordinator, have begun following the blooming progress of these trees; Douglas will report the “official” peak bloom date for this location for this year.
Here are photos from Douglas Justice taken on March 27. I think the first one features the same two flower clusters as just above. It was below 10C degrees in the intervening days, and little progress has been made.
Douglas Justice’s March 29 photos show a little more blooming progression, and another area with some open flowers. These two days had temperatures a few degrees above 10C.
Pedicels in this photo have definitely elongated, are 1-2 cm, buds are a lighter pink shade.
April 1 – there are enough open flowers to offer nice photos. But, we’re not even at 25% open. The photos are by Wendy Cutler.
April 4 – the advancement in blooming is noticeable now in Douglas Justice’s photos compared with three days ago. It’s been cold (below 10C degrees) but progress is now inexorable.
April 5 – not much sun today, wind bringing in the predicted rain for the next few days.
April 7 – surely far more than half these flowers are open. Our spec for “peak bloom” is 70% open. Douglas Justice has now called it – peak bloom on April 7. Wendy Cutler got to photograph them.
A sunny moment on the trees complete changes the colour in photos. This is the same photoshoot as the previous photo.
April 6, 2023. We have not yet featured ‘Pandora’, an early season bloomer with white flowers. The petals on these are almost twice as long as they are wide, so they do not overlap. That is a distinctive feature on these goblet-shaped trees. Thanks to Anne Eng for this photo.
April 3, 2023. In the previous posting, we have featured single white blossoms that can be seen around town now, or coming soon. You can find the most recent posting at Yesterday’s news – single white flowers – Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival (vcbf.ca). Today we feature two similar weeping trees, one a white one not shown yesterday, and the other the same species but a pink cultivar that we have featured here before. Thanks to Shirley Willard for both photos.
Both these trees with a pendulous (weeping) shape have the botanical name Prunusitosakura Pendula Group. This does not seem to be a registered cultivar, so we are calling it ito-zakura, meaning thread cherry, as it is known in Japan. It is not all that common in the wild, but it is available from landscaping suppliers in white or light pink.
Much more widely planted is the Prunus itosakura cultivar ‘Beni-shidare’, also called ‘Pendula Rosea’, with its showy deep-pink flowers.