Vancouver Cherry Blossom FestivalPresented by
April 7, 2025 We are back now to single white blossoms that all seem to look the same. But we can still distinguish the cultivars by the parts that look different. For instance, ‘Sendai-shidare’ is a small weeping tree with very distorted limbs. If you turn the flowers over, the long thin green sepals that form the star on the back are distinctive.
The peak bloom date for Vancouver’s location in the 2025 International Cherry Blossom Prediction Competition was April 3, eleven days later than peak bloom last year.
“When will the cherry trees bloom in 2025?” The VCBF is once again offering up our ‘Akebono’ trees at Maple Grove Park, for the fourth year of the International Cherry Blossom Prediction Competition. More information about the challenge can be found at https://competition.statistics.gmu.edu/. The contestants have picked March 31 as the 2025 blooming date. ChatGPT has picked March 25. The race is on!
You can see photos of the blooming progression last year at Yesterday’s news – 2024 International Cherry Blossom Prediction Competition – Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival (vcbf.ca).
Photos from 2025 at Maple Grove Park
We had below freezing nights the first two weeks of February, which set what looked like an early blooming season back at least a week. Douglas Justice took our first photo on March 18, noting that the bud scales were barely cracked apart. This ‘Akebono’ tree is in the same group as we have been photographing, and is much younger than the three others we will focus on.
March 21, only three days later, even with temperatures below 10C degrees, these trees are starting to show visible florets. In the rain. Photos by Wendy Cutler.
On March 26, some blossom clusters are still at the extension of florets phase, but many are now into elongation of pedicels. Photos by Taka Naidu.
March 30. We have been focusing on the three old trees in this group of four, thinking the younger tree’s blooming might progress at a different rate, but there is no conformity to the blooming progress of those older trees either. One has flower clusters noticeably open from a distance, but just on the south side (the street side). There are plenty of flowers at the Puffy Pale Pink stage, with plenty of still dark pink buds. Daytime temperatures will be above 10C degrees this week, but nights will be cold, almost to freezing. Photos are shown here are shown tree followed by flowers of that tree. The one we call Tree 2, in the middle, has no branches at eye level, yielding hardly any photos in focus. Fortunately, its blooming progress seems intermediate between the other two old trees.
April 3. Four days later, and here we are at peak bloom. They make a peakier impression than the peak photos last year, but it was cloudy for last year’s photos. The bright sun this year shows the blossoms glowing white, but there are still buds, the flowers look fresh and there are no petals at all on the ground. The top line of photos here shows the set of trees followed by the younger tree that was included in the determination, but its photo started off the photos this year. The following rows show the flowers on the tree at the start of the row.
April 6, 2025 ‘Afterglow’ are rare in the area, planted along just a few whole blocks in Vancouver and Burnaby. They are always planted with ‘Akebono’ (featured yesterday) and are on the Vancouver city trees map as that cultivar. But jeez, Louise, the flowers are pink! And the petals are narrow, so they do not overlap to form a cup.
April 5, 2025 ‘Akebono’ are the most commonly seen cherry blossoms of the early mid-season. They have single (5-petaled) white flowers, very similar to ‘Somei-yoshino’ just featured here, but they sometimes have an extra petaloid (half-petal) seen in the centre of the flowers. Sometimes, you can find several of these petaloids, but often it will seem as if there is just one per tree. This photo shows petaloids in three of the flowers. When these trees approach peak bloom, they often have a pink appearance, particularly compared with the whiteness of ‘Somei-yoshino’. But as the flowers age, they will become white, while ‘Somei-yoshino’ flowers become pink when they age.
March 31, 2025 ‘ ‘Somei-yoshino’ usher us into mid-season blossoms. These can look similar to the fluffy ‘Akebono’ blossoms that are so widely-planted around here, but the flowers usually turn white while still in bud, and when the trees come into full bloom, they are much more white than ‘Akebono’.
March 26, 2025 ‘Accolade’ are up next. These beautiful semi-double flowers look their best when the pale pink flowers are still emerging surrounded by deep pink buds. These are opening late this year.
March 22, 2025 – Let’s talk Plums!
If you live in or near Vancouver, BC, ornamental plums, Prunus cerasifera, densely lining one or both sides of one or more blocks, are now or will soon be sporting their popcorn-looking blossoms. They come in pink or white, the white ones opening first, and usually both colours open at the same time. They are hard to miss – Vancouver city itself has around 17,000 of them planted as street trees.
Compare the two photos above, plum buds on the left, ‘Akebono’ cherry buds on the right. These are easy to distinguish if you take the time to get up close.
March 21, 2025. Two dark pink flowered cultivars are in bloom now: ‘Whitcomb’, which have been featured here already, and the more rare ‘Okame’, with even smaller flowers, each of the five petals less than 1 cm long and narrow, so not overlapping, and a red calyx tube (back of the flower) that is at least the same length as the petal length. Flowers of both trees fade to almost white, but the red calyces on ‘Okame’ keep the tree looking colourful for longer. Here are ‘Whitcomb flowers, then ‘OKame’, both photos from new Cherry Scout Kyrie Vermette.
March 13, 2025. Blooming is progressing slowly this year, with quite a variety of blooming dates for the early ‘Whitcomb’ cherries. The ones that opened the last week in February still look good. More have joined them, and there are still more of this cultivar yet to open. Here are blossoms posted on our forums in the Arbutus Ridge neighbourhood, photo by Anne Eng and in the Sunshine Coast neighbourhood, photo by Shirley Willard. These flowers are really smaller than they appear here – diameters are more like 2 cm.
February 3, 2025. It was looking as if the early-blooming ‘Whitcomb’ cherries would be in their splendour next week, only one week earlier than usual, but then winter arrived. Snow on the deep pink buds and emerging blossoms at least makes for nice photos.
