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.
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.
