Vancouver Cherry Blossom FestivalPresented by
April 29, 2024. The last hurrah – ‘Shiro-fugen’ flowers are no longer looking fresh, but they still have colour – just not the colour they started with, which was white flowers with bronze leaves, like this.
Here is what the ‘Shiro-fugen’ flowers look like now, green leaves, pink flowers, some white flowers, and many flowers with a mix of pink and white petals. While dark pink ‘Kanzan’ flowers are now fading to white, these ‘Shiro-fugen’ white flowers are delayed-opening ones.
April 24, 2024. We’re getting down to the wire – only the very late bloomers still have flowers worth a visit: avium ‘Plena’, ‘Shiro-fugen’, and ‘Kiku-zakura’ – the chrysanthemum cherry. These light pink flowers are smaller than the other double-flowered blossoms featured recently, but they have 75 to 100 tiny petals to start, and then they get even more petals when they start showing second-story flowers developing from their centres. At this point, the aging pink flowers are fading, and the new flowers appear with dark pink buds opening to the mature light pink colour. These trees are small, with a distinctive goblet shape filled in by somewhat straight crossing limbs.
The photo below is an unusual capture of the sepals of the second story flower before its petals have even developed.
April 16, 2024. Pink ‘Kanzan‘ blossoms are still running the show. These are so widely planted here because they are generally healthy trees, relative to some of the other cultivars, and are able to withstand extremes of weather and a certain amount of truck pruning. These can be large trees, very often forming a canopy over the street when planted on both sides. They open bright pink, but gradually fade to a very pale colour.
Not in competition at all, but with similar-looking flowers, are ‘Pink Perfection‘ trees. These much more delicate trees will never form a canopy over a street. So far, they have not been particularly hardy here, but UBC Botanical Garden has propagated some on their own roots (not grafted, as all previously seen ones here were), to see if they will be more healthy. When these first open, they create a raspberry swirl ice-cream effect with their red buds, dark pink outer petals, and lighter inner petals.
April 11, 2024. You might have noticed – ‘Kanzan‘ blossoms are starting to appear. The City of Vancouver Street Trees Portal shows 10,000 of them planted as street trees, many of them lining whole blocks on both sides of the street. Since they’re also planted in parks and are popular in private yards, it gets pretty pink around here.
April 7, 2024. Still everything is blooming at once, still mid-season and late-season trees. Moving on to double flowers now, having more than five petals. Here is a comparison of fragrant white ‘Shirotae‘ blossoms, usually opening in the mid-season …
… , and ‘Ukon‘, with pale yellow flowers, usually appearing a little later. These often look white, unless there is something white to which to compare them. But as they age, they may take on some up-close colour interest with green and red stripes.
April 6, 2024. Still catching up here, with everything blooming at once – at least mid-season and late-season trees. Here are some single White flowers, all pretty rare in this area, with the top one just added. The ones with “nioi’ or “no-o” in their names are fragrant, a fairly unusual feature of cherry trees.
‘Sendai-shidare’ are easily distinguished from the others here – they are usually short dense pendulous trees with thick very contorted limbs.
The wizened ‘Jo-nioi’, at the RCMP Headquarters property has sent up a new shoot. Here’s hoping the only other known example in Vancouver does the same. This looks similar to the ‘Washi-no-o’ featured just below, but it blooms later and the flowers are more likely to show the extra half-petals you can see in this photo.
‘Washi-no-o’ are fairly rare, but our Cherry Scouts have found ten locations in the area. The name means “eagle’s tail”, suggestive of the ruffled petal edges.
‘Surugadai-nioi’, only two known so far, one very private tree in Fairview, and its offspring at UBC Botanical Garden.
‘Umineko’ are usually older trees than ‘Snow Goose’ but their parents are the same and they look identical. The young ones that come in labelled ‘Snow Goose’ get that name. Note the round overlapping petals that result in fat stars in the centres. Young trees are distinctively narrow and upright. Here are
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20240325 Snow-Goose_Cedarhurst&MarineDr_Taka7
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.
May 13, 2023. The most interesting, most magical, longest in bloom cherry tree around right now is ‘Shiro-fugen’. These opened with white flowers and bronze leaves. Many still had white flowers when the leaves started to turn green. Then the flowers started to turn luminescent pink from the centres. Eventually, the trees are becoming ‘Kanzan’-coloured pink, with green or bronzy-green leaves. Yet new flowers keep opening, white, so it’s easy to see them when you’re looking closely at the flowers. From close-up, the ‘Shiro-fugen’ flowers won’t look as withered as soon. Thanks to Shirley Willard, Taka Naidu, Anne Eng, Yong Hui, Lisa Lennie, May Lin and Wendy Cutler for the photos.
Anne Eng, VCBF Cherry Scout, introduces us to Shosar cherry trees on the UBC Neighborhood Blog for Burnaby:
The two trees of ‘Shosar’ are in full bloom on the south side of Sherban Crescent, east of Holdom, at March 26, 2022.
Anne Eng, VCBF Cherry Scout
Bright “cerise” pink flowers with red sepals and calyxes, and veins on the petals.
Nice curve of Akebono along the seawall at Coal Harbor this morning. Many people out taking photos by them!
Lisa L. on the UBC Botanical Garden Forums Blog for Downtown
