If anyone can lend some help on this, I would be grateful: I have two landscape contractors planting two separate phases of a job. They are both planting Prunus x yedoensis 'Akebono'. The trees planted by one look quite different from the trees planted by the other. They are both cherries, but they are not both Akebono, as far as I can tell. In the twig photo, the bottom twig is the one I believe to be Akebono. In the full tree photo with the sign in the background, I believe to be Akebono The other full tree photo is the one I would like to identify. Based on its form, I haven't seen anything like it. I don't have the luxury of waiting until bloom/leafout to help in identification. Thanks for any help.
I can't answer your question, but I'm wondering about all that pruning of the trees in question. Was that to cut off damaged areas, or was that someone's idea of improving the shape of the trees? I'd understood that the less pruning of cherries, the better. Are those ones already off to a bad start?
They arrived from the nursery in that condition. They were obviously severely pruned back at some point. I wonder if that contributed to the strange form. Another possibility is that they were left tied up for an extended period of time.
I'm sorry no-one has been able to figure out what you're dealing with there. I know Douglas Justice has talked about how trees get incorrectly named when they arrive at the nurseries in winter with no identifying characteristics - even the shapes of young trees are pretty similar. There's still not much in the way of identifying characteristics on your trees. I was surprised how still in winter condition these trees are, and you're way down there in Tennessee. Our downtown Akebonos are in bloom now (see the Downtown thread), and there are probably at least some open blossoms on this cultivar all over the city. But we are a month early this year.
