Whew! I thought for a while there that we'd have the late season 'Kanzan' in full bloom before the end of March, but with the the cooler weather, they may not even make it to be the April Fools. Joseph's been reporting in Blossom Reports from Joseph Lin, Our Man About Town about what cherries you can see in bloom. I'm writing a bit about two trees you can see in bloom for which we're not collecting reports. One is a cherry, P. avium, or Mazzard or sweet cherry, the tree that supplies the rootstock of many of our ornamentals. It's popping up all around town and country now, usually baseball-size clusters of small (2-3cm) white not all that interesting blossoms. Many of the trees have a tall study trunk, and there are a lot of young tall spindly trees around too. Douglas Justice says in Ornamental Cherries in Vancouver: There are also a fair number of double pink 'Kanzan' around town that are half avium from the rootstock trying to take over the tree. It happens with other cultivars too, but the vigorous 'Kanzan' put up a good fight, hence the large bi-colour trees. Just as there are a huge variety of eating cherries, there is a lot of variety in what these trees and their blossoms look like. Some are very showy and hard to distinguish from the cultivar 'Plena', which are large trees with double white blossoms. One distinguishing feature of all of these is the curled back sepals, forming a circle on the backs of the flowers instead of a star. You can see photos in the Prunus Avium - Small singles, green leaves, large round tree, mid to late season thread. The other tree that's commonly planted around town is the crab apple. Again, there are a lot of cultivars, so they can look quite different from each other. See Crab Apples – red buds, white blossoms, green leaves, late cherry season for more pictures. Upcoming Walks I have two walks planned with the Vancouver Walkers Meetup Group, and you're welcome to join us. Easter Parade and walk in the park - and blossom hunt - Sunday April 4, 2pm I didn't think there would be many cherries in bloom, and indeed, there will not be swaths of cherry colour, so this wasn't billed as a cherry walk. But there will be specimen trees of several interesting cultivars along the West End/Stanley Park route: 'Gyoiko', 'Shujaku', 'Kiku-zakura', 'Atsumori', 'Takasago' and 'Ojochin'. This walk starts at the "A-maze-ing Laughter" sculpture across from the Starbucks at Davie and Denman. Click the title link to read more. Cherry Walk II - Sunday April 11, 2pm The first "Cherry Walk" was the downtown 'Akebono' walk. This will be a 'Kanzan' walk through Fairview and Mount Pleasant, starting at the Starbucks on 2nd under the Granville Bridge, just outside Granville Island. Click the title link to read more. If you'd like to join us and don't want to join the meetup group to rsvp, you can rsvp to me.
