April 26, 2026 While we are waiting for ‘Shiro-fugen’ to completely change colours, here is ‘Ito-kukuri’, a rare find in our area. But we hope to see more of this culitvar. In a collaboration between UBC Botanical Garden and the biotechnology program at BCIT. Keith Turner, instructor in the biotechnology program, and his students worked with ‘Ito-kukuri’ in their tissue culture laboratory. By 2013, small micropropagated trees were released at a BCIT fund-raiser. This photo by Tao Yan is from one of those trees.
March 6, 2024. Even though most of the earliest to bloom ‘Whitcomb’ cherry trees were hard hit by the January freeze, there were some nice-looking blossoms, sparsely distributed on most of the trees. Here is a recent photo from Richmond.
20240304 Hazlebridge Alexandra Whitcomb Willard IMG_7963
May 7, 2023. After such a grey April, who wasn’t excited to see Vancouver city streets colouring up with over 10,000 ‘Kanzan’ cherries, big double pink blossoms forming archways over so many of our streets?! There are many more in the surrounding neighbourhoods as well.
Kanzan_ Fraser Hwy204St_ maylin_20230428_IMG_2787
Here is a new kid on the block – as yet there are very few of these ‘Royal Burgundy’ trees. They are all youngsters, so we’re not too sure how large they get. The flowers seem identical to those of ‘Kanzan’, but the leaves are dark burgundy.
Here is a cultivar planted on city streets as ‘Kanzan’, but it’s ‘Kiku-zakura’, a chrysanthemum-flowered cherry with as many as 100 petals, yet smaller flowers than ‘Kanzan’. And what beautiful, complex little marvels they are. They open pink, fade to white, but second-story flowers develop in the blossom centres, so there is usually a mix of colours on any one tree and any one flower.
May 3, 2023. It’s almost all fluffy double blossoms from here on out. Here are two that are not all that rare. These are easily distinguished when the flowers are opening, but after their full bloom, distinguishing them can be difficult.
‘Shiro-fugen’, with its sturdy outstretched limbs and flat top is further distinguished by its overall dusky colouring up until the flowers have passed their peak of white-ness. The leaves are brown, buds are brownish pink, and the flowers open pure white. Next, after the flowers have been open for several days, the leaves will turn green. After that, the flowers will turn neon-pink starting from the centres. There will still be new flowers for a few weeks, and many of the old flowers will hang on, making this a tree of interest for a whole month, with a mix of flower colours.
202300430_Shirofugen_OakW43_Eng_8047
In contrast to the above trees, ‘Ichiyo’ trees have a fresher appearance due to the almost green leaves when the flowers are opening. And there is more pink in the newly opened flowers. The limbs are more upright, giving the trees a rounder shape. These flowers age to almost white, while ‘Shiro-fugen’ flowers age to pink. The trick when you come across one of these is knowing in which direction the colouring is developing.
April 30, 2023. The festival has officially ended, but one month is far too short for showing off our beautiful blossoms. As long as the Cherry Scouts keep posting them, we’ll feature them here.
The whole area has just gone pink with ‘Kanzan’ cherries, but there are still rare gems showing off. Here are two with double white blossoms.
‘Ichihara-tora-no-o’, the tiger tail from Ichihara, the fanciful name referencing the way the flowers and leaves drape along the limbs.
20230426_Icihara-tora-no-o_E57Fraser_Eng_7925
If there could be said to be opposites, ‘Shogetsu’ might be it – instead of slithering along the limbs and branches, this cultivar’s flowers dangle from long stems, leading to its name meaning “moonlight through pine trees”.
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.
20230424_Mikuruma-gaeshi_BrockNanaimo_Eng_7898
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.
20230421_Takasago_TalismanDinmont_Eng_7857
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.
20230414_Schmitt_VanDusenWinterStroll_Eng_7718
We only know two locations for ‘Choshu-hizakura’, beautiful trees with petals often edged in a darker pink, accompanied by bronze leaves.
20230419_Choshu-hizakura_OliverMcdonald_Eng_7773
‘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.
20230412_Washi-no-o_NootkaE25_Eng_7661
‘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).
20230411_BeniShidare_E35Culloden_Eng_7641
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.
