I get to thank new cherry scout @Tao31 for inspiring this posting. She wrote to me: "Wow, 'Ito-kukuri' has more than one look. The reason I started to second guess my thoughts is the flowers look more whitish, not pink enough." I've been thinking about this for days. For what it's worth, here's what I've got. Species trees (wild, not cultivated trees) often have more than one look, because cherry trees don't come true from seeds. You don't know what fertilized the flower, so seedlings can have a lot of variation. That is not supposed to be the case with named cultivars, the ones written as Prunus yedoensis or Prunus Sato-zakura Group and then 'Cultivar Name' in single quotes, so for instance Prunus yedoensis 'Akebono'. The cultivars are cloned, grown from cuttings or tissue culture, so they are supposed to be just like the tree they were cloned from. To be a cultivar, they all have to be cloned from the original or descendants of the original. Their DNA should be identical. So it's fair to be surprised that 'Ito-kukuri' has more than one look. Yet, they all have more than one look. For one thing, the growing conditions can differ year to year (more or less sun or rain or temperature reading), but also the siting with respect to neighbouring trees, plants or buildings, and the soil conditions and composition. Maybe the location receives runoff from a spring or is on a mound that dries out quickly. Maybe other nearby plants compete for ground water. Maybe people tread on the roots, or the tree was planted too high above the soil line or too deeply, or maybe soil amendments were added that make the roots unwilling to grow out into the surrounding soil. And some (most but not all) ornamental cherry trees are grafted, some high and some low to the ground, some more successfully than others. Then there are the more than usual sightings this year of neighbouring trees of the same cultivar, planted at the same time, one blooming a week ahead of the other, for no discernable reason. All that aside, though, trees will still look different at any time during their blooming cycle. Think of the trees you have seen with red buds yet light pink or white flowers. Here are two: 'Akebono' and 'Shogetsu'. The buds don't all open at the same time, so at any point during blooming development, some buds will still have their bud colour, some flowers will be opening still with remnants of the bud colour, and some flowers will be fully open and white. When almost all the flowers have opened, these trees appear to be fully white. Photographers' names are in the photo name captions. 20230410_Akebono_TownCentrePark NothEnd_Taka 10 20260405 GibsonsWayShaw AkebonoWillard IMG_1780 20090421_BayshoreEast_Shogetsu_Cutler_DSC02418.jpg 20260418_Shogetsu_QE33Parking_Eng_2181 But it doesn't end there. As they age, flowers that open white start getting red eyes, and the red often spreads to the outer edges of the petals that stay on long enough, giving an overall pink appearance. On trees that open pink, the petals that hang on often fade toward white. When that happens, you get the situation for which I refuse to give IDs. 'Somei-yoshino' and 'Akebono' flowers look the same, with 'Akebono' flowers losing their plumpness and petaloids and shrinking to 'Somei-yoshino' size. Somei-yoshino_2628W5th_Junglekeeper_20180412_162233.jpg Akebono_YorksonCreekMews_8050 204thSt_Cutler_20260413_141018.jpg 'Kanzan' leaves turn green and the flowers hanging on the tree fade to almost white; at the same time 'Shiro-fugen' leaves turn green and their flowers turn pink. Kanzan_Elgin49th_Cutler_20260420_155114.jpg 20230508_Shirofugen_W42Yew_Eng_8211.jpeg Of the rarer trees, 'Ito-kukuri' and 'Yokihi' both have white pompoms when fully in bloom, but if you have only experienced them when the flowers were developing, you have a very different idea about their appearance. In some cases, you need to use more than your eyes - 'Yokihi' are supposed to be fragrant, thankfully unlike 'Ito-kukuri'. Ito-kukuri_4831PattersonAve_Tao_20260417_IMG122823c-wlc Ito-kukuri_4831PattersonAve_Tao_20260417_IMG122746 Yokihi_187W48thAve_Tao_20260409_IMG103349c-wlc Yokihi_SlocanDundas_Cutler_20260422_190156.jpg A lot of the cultivars on our map are named correctly because some of our cherry scouts are so eager to see the emerging flowers that they photograph them when they are easiest to ID. For that, we're grateful. And we're also grateful that mis-identified trees are reposted with better names. There are certainly IDs that I have made that need correcting. Just because I named some tree, that doesn't make the ID correct. Do you know the expression "...if the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything as if it were a nail." – Abraham Maslow? We started with the names of only 20 cherries (and no photos), so we made some of those names fit the trees we found. On the other hand, that first year, I remember a West End scout and I in February crazy anxious about daring to identify as 'Whitcomb' the trees we found with single pink flowers, though it was the only possibility on our list. We became more daring when we were able to walk around with our Ornamental Cherries in Vancouver handbook. One book and the internet are not enough, though, to assure that we can always get the IDs correct. We only really get better at getting IDs right by learning how we got some of them wrong, and by recognizing the variations these trees can present.
