Cherries in Japan

[eteinindia]

Hi, Scouts,
This is Mariko. I came back to Japan for good at the end of September, and now I’m living in the center part of Tokyo. I miss Vancouver a lot, but there are lots of cherry trees in Japan. So I’ll report what I see here.
I’ve heard in the TV that there were some cherries blooming every month in Japan. Japan is a small country but islands are spread from south (Okinawa, very near to Taiwan) to north (Hokkaido, as north as Toronto). Also there are more than 600 kinds of cherries. I’m not sure about July, August, and September, but I'm sure about other months. In October (Jugatsu) Autumnalis (Jugatus-zakura) starts to bloom, then in November Fuyu-zakura (winter cherry) starts to bloom and it will continue to bloom in December. At the end of January, Cherry blossom festival is held in Okinawa. (I haven’t been to Okinawa but there is a famous park which has about 20000 cherry trees!!)

Anyway in the middle of October, I visited my parents’ house in Ichikawa (halfway between Tokyo and Narita Airport). There are 2 Autumnalis trees in the near-by park. They were blooming without leaves when other trees and grasses were still very green. They are rather small trees compare to Somei-yoshinos. Flowers were almost white and very small. So they didn’t stand out at all.
They will bloom in spring again. I heard that spring flowers were pinker than autumn flowers.( I haven’t seen them yet!)



In the last picture, Autumnalis locates in the right-hand side of willow tree. The left-hand side trees also have no leaves. They are Somei-yoshinos. In Japan some cherry trees lose leaves after hot summer but some cherry trees change colors in November.

[Ron B]

Notice how different this is from 'Autumnalis Rosea'. I have seen the two flowering side by side at Wisley (RHS garden in England) and the 'Autumnalis' there had the same general aspect as the Japanese specimen shown above: a light sprinkling of white-looking flowers on thick twigs versus a comparatively abundant display of definitely pink flowers on a fine-textured tree. You can see why 'Autumnalis Rosea' would become the prevalent one in nurseries over here, with 'Autumnalis' eventually being nearly or actually non-existent. There was a solitary specimen that was probably this latter variety in a Seattle park as late as the 1980s, I think I probably saw it driving by but it was removed before I ever paid it enough attention to have an opinion. Apart from that no other examples are known here (NW USA). I have never seen it in person anywhere in North America.

[eteinindia]

On November 3, I went to Shinjuku Gyoen Park to see Autumnalis. Shinjuku Gyoen is a very big park in Shinjuku where Tokyo Metropolitan Government office locates. It’s famous for cherries. I have read there were about 1400 cherry trees of 65 cultivars. The information center at the entrance showed there were 3 kinds of cherries blooming now. They were Kobuku-zakura, Fuyu-zakura and Autumnalis.

Kobuku-zakura was a very young tree which had not much flowers and they located upper brunches. So I couldn’t see by my eyes well. From far they were very small and rather fluffy. My good camera could take better pictures than I saw. Anyway this was the first time I have heard the name of Kobuku-zakura and seen it. (There was a name plate on the tree.)



Fuyu-zakura was also a little tree which has small single flowers. Fuyu means winter in Japanese. Fuyu-zakura is one of the famous cherry trees which blooms twice a year, at the beginning of winter and spring. The name Plate said Sanpagawa-no-fuyu-zakura. Because Fuyu-zakura was first found near Sanpa-gawa(river)


On the map of the park 2 locations of Autumnalis are printed. So I was expected to see a lot of Autumnalis. But only 3 Autumnalis trees were there and all of them were not very big. (They locate rather shadowy places.)


Shinjuku Gyoen Park is a well-maintained park and it has western and Japanese gardens and wide lawn area.



In November there are exhibitions of Kiku (Chrysanthemum). They were wonderful.
The last picture shows 710 flowers from 1 Chrysanthemum. It’s great.

[Ron B]

The one you showed in the first post looks like the 'Kobuku-zakura' in the second. I did think the flowers looked too heavy and doubled for 'Autumnalis' but just went with your identification.

Kuitert 1999 does not mention 'Koboku-zakura' as far as I can see. He lists 'Fuyu-zakura' under Prunus incisa, says the cultivar is thought to be a hybrid with P. serrulata. Based on Jacobson 1996 (who says we seem to have a different clone over here, because ours has hairy leaves) perhaps the most similar thing in North America is 'Fudan-zakura'. I have seen that on park land in Victoria and in a nursery in Oregon.

[eteinindia]

Ron, you might be right. Now I saw pictures I took in Ichikawa again and I also thought they were too heavy and petals were too wide for Autumnalis. But in my memory they were not as heavy as Kobuku-zakura. I can’t identify without seeing the flowers again. If I have a time, I’d like to visit my parents again.
But I found a Kobuku-zakura tree in a walking distance from my condo. It has a plate which explains what Kobukuzakura is.
Kobuku-zakura (Prunus × Kobuku-zakura Ohwi) is thought to be a hybrid with Shina-mi-zakura ( Prunus pseudo-cerasus Lindl. ) and Jugatsu-zakura (Autumnalis) or Edo-higan ( Prunus pendula Maxim.f.ascendens Ohwi ). Kobuku means happiness of having a lot of children. Kobuku-zakura has 1 to 7 pistils in a flower. So 1 to 3 fruits grow from one flower. It will be very easy to identify Kobuku-zakura if I can see flowers closely.
Ref. from Japanese Web: http://hccweb5.bai.ne.jp/nishicerasu.../c-kobuku.html [edited by wcutler: here's this one translated by google]
: http://www.genetics.or.jp/Sakura/htm...ukuzakura.html

Fuyu-zakura( Prunus × parvifolia Koehne cv. parvifolia ) is a hybrid with Mame-zakura( Prunus incisa Thunb. ). Some web page says Fuyu-zakura and Fudan-zakura are same and they are hybrid with Mame-zakura & Yama-zakura. But some says Fuyu-zakura is a hybrid with Mame-zakura & Oshima-zakura and Fudan-zakura is thought to be a hybrid with Yama-zakura & Oshima-zakura. (The book I gave to Wendy and Douglas says so but in Japanese.)
Ref. from Japanese Web: http://hccweb5.bai.ne.jp/nishicerasu...hm/c-fuyu.html
http://hccweb5.bai.ne.jp/nishicerasu...m/c-fudan.html
http://www.genetics.or.jp/Sakura/htm...uyusakura.html

[Ron B]

>Kobuku-zakura has 1 to 7 pistils in a flower. So 1 to 3 fruits grow from one flower<

Really?

[eteinindia]

I haven't seen by my eyes, but the book and also web-pages say that Kobuku-zakura sometimes has plural pistils. Could you see the Japanese web-sites I posted? There is a photo of a flower without petals. There you can see at least 2 pistils in one calyx tube. I don't know how to show it here. I just paste the translated page of the pictuere.

http://translate.google.ca/translate...%3Den%26sa%3DG

[Ron B]

The part that surprises me is the claim that more than one fruit can result from one flower.