April 4, 2026 Mid-season blooms are opening quickly now. ‘Akebono’ are still looking good in most of the area, but two cultivars with double flowers are bringing joy this weekend. ‘Shirotae’ are often beautiful wide-spreading trees, and they can grow quite large. Their leaves start to open with the flowers, giving the trees an over-all warmer colour. ‘Takasago’ are small goblet-shaped trees, often sickly-looking and not particularly attractive, but the pinky-white flowers, when they first open set against the dark pink buds, are extremely beautiful. Thanks to Cherry Scouts Anne Eng and Tao Yan for the photos.
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April 16, 2025 ‘Takasago’ trees almost always look awkward and diseased in Vancouver, but when they bloom, the flowers are so beautiful and densely packed that all is forgiven. They open, as shown here, with deep pink buds brightening to small pinky white double flowers. These will turn white, acquiring red eyes when they age. These uncommon trees have a few even more rare look-alikes. Their distinctive characteristic is their hairy, almost fuzzy, flower stems.
The problem with “Takasago”, as Douglas Justice said about a different kind of cherry, is that they are “exquisite flowers on ugly trees”. On the festival Cherry Cultivars page, he says “This cherry’s tight, clustered flowers unfortunately also increase its susceptibility to disease, and most specimens in Vancouver are badly disfigured”. By which he means that they have brown rot all over them.
The blossoms are particularly beautiful when they’re first coming out, when the buds are almost red and the flowers open to white, demonstrated beautifully in Anne’s photos. They’re coming out now, so it’s time to look for them.
