‘Shogetsu’ (moonlight on pine trees). A Sato-zakura (Japanese village cherry) with a spreading, rounded crown and elegant, very long-stalked flowers composed of the lightest pink, fringed petals that burst open in May. The flowers are always accompanied by the leaves, which emerge green some weeks earlier. ‘Shogetsu’ is superficially similar to ‘Shiro-fugen’, once that cultivar reaches its green-leaf stage, but ‘Shogetsu’ is always smaller growing and less horizontally branched, with much frillier petals. Unfortunately, many older grafted plants around Vancouver are badly disfigured because of susceptibility to disease when grafted on mazzard (P. avium) rootstock.
