Identification: Asagi, Kizakura, Gyoiko and Ukon - Greenish white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

Here's a photo, taken April 23, 2007, of a tree in Stanley Park showing the green markings.
Edited by wcutler April 24: this nice blossom is probably not Ukon - see Douglas's reply and photos below. You're invited to name this one.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon – greenish yellow white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

The 'Ukon' that is commonly planted in Vancouver is somewhat different than this cultivar, pictured directly above. The images attached here and in the Ukon thread [edited by wcutler] are more typical of what we know as 'Ukon'.


The photo in the first posting here more closely resembles 'Gioiko' as it appears on page 221 in the Manual of Flowering Cherries (Flower Association of Japan, 1983). The illustration of 'Gioiko' in Japanese Flowering Cherries (Kuitert, 1999) does not appear to be the same cultivar, however. Indeed, I would have called the pictured plant 'Gioiko' were it not for Kuitert's account.

Another possibility is 'Kizakura', which a a close fit, except that the petals don't appear to be "deeply notched." Kuitert notes that in the 1822 catalogue Hana-no-kagami (A paragon of flowers), there are "six green or creamish garden forms." It would be nice to have a name here, but I doubt we'll come up with one.

 

What cherry? Greenish-white doubles, green leaves, late season

This looks the same to me as the Stanley Park not-a-Ukon blossoms In the first posting, (edited May 15: which Douglas Justice suggests may or may not be 'Gioiko' or 'Kizakura'). The double white blossoms have green markings, giving an overall creamy yellowish impression. The leaves are green, but I didn't notice these trees until all the flowers were open, so I don't know if the leaves started out green. The tree is fairly large and densely branched. This tree is on private property in front of the building at 1234 Barclay St in Vancouver.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon - greenish yellow white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

The Barclay St tree is in bloom now, so here are a few more photos showing that the leaves emerge bronze and that there are areas that have hardly any of the green colouring. Until I look for it on the tree, I don't see the green that shows up so well in the photos, which should rule out Gyoiko, whose blossoms, according to Kuitert, hardly show among the green foliage. There are two blossoms showing an extra sepal.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon - greenish yellow white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

If anyone has any contacts at Tokyo Botanical Garden in Hakusan, now called Koishikawa Botanical Garden of the School of Science of the University of Tokyo, I met a man photographing the Stanley Park tree today who is not particularly interested in cherries but was excited to see this tree because he remembers it from the Tokyo Botanical Garden. He didn't know the name but would have liked to know it. I thought maybe the garden or the university would have something showing the tree and the cultivar, but I wasn't able to come even close. I did find a photo someone posted from Ueno Park in Tokyo showing what looks like the same tree, but it doesn't name the tree.

This tree in the park near the two Shirotae still in bloom at the entrance to the work yard at the golf course and the one at 1234 Barclay are both in bloom now, May 1. The outside petals are the most green, with the inside petals being whitish with some green striping. The overall effect is yellowish. These look more green than the Barclay ones, but they've only recently opened, and I wonder if that makes them look different, or maybe they are different.




I found four more of these trees clustered a bit further north from the entrance to the workyard just inside the golf course. Three of them have ivy covering their trunks and the other has some rootstock growth.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon - greenish yellow white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

Very very Unfortunately I don't know anyone I can contact and check cherry Blossom in Koishikawa Botanical Garden. Actually my husband and I bought a small condo just next to Koishikawa Botanical Garden 7 years ago! We moved there in January. But just after a week, my husband's company told us to go to India. So we could live there just 2 months and we couldn't experience cherry season. Since then we are outside of Japan. Perhaps the company might send us back to Japan this year. Then I can check myself next spring!( Then I will miss cherry scouts in Vancouver!!)

Anyway the tree looks like Gyoiko. I haven't seen Gyoiko, but as far as I know there are only 2 yellow or green cherry, Ukon and Gyoiko. I found one posting written in Japanese. But I believe you can see pictures.
Wendy found the translated page!

But the translation is Strange!
The first line 'Traffic yellow robe Sakura (GYOI so they ZAKU)' is the wrong Translation means just "Gyoiko" , just 4 letters in Chinese character as shown on the top of the page. (Meanings of 4 letters used for Gyoiko is 'noble's,Clothes, yellow and cherry.) 　 And 'Kono' in Japanese means 'this'. So, 'Sakura Kono' means 'This cherry'

Anyway, First part of the page says;

Gyoiko is a very unique cherry.It starts blooming late April. It changes the colour a little from green to yellow to pink. And at the end it falls not by petals but by whole flowers.
It is a kind of Sato-zakura influenced by Ooshima-zakura like Shogetsu, Ukon, Suruga-nioi., Taki-nioi etc.

Then this page shows the pictures of flowers and the date taken and shows how it changed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In other posting it says 'Sometimes only the center part of the flowers becomes pink'
So If the flowers of the tree change colours, it is Gyoiko.
But if it dosen't change then I can't find the name at this moment.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon Asagi? or Gyoiko? - greenish white

Bill Stephen suggested to me back in February that these might be Asagi. Now that I've got the hang of these Japanese pages, I found one with a photo of Asagi, which does look pretty similar. Here is a translated page that shows a photo of Asagi (with some question marks). Asagi is supposed to be so rare, though, and there are five of them in Stanley Park, one on Barclay St (if it's the same) and one just reported in Burnaby (described as being "distinctly striped with kool-aid green."). The blossoms do fall whole, and only the centres go red. The rest seems to fade to white.

Here are late season blossoms from the Barclay St tree:


and measurement of the blossoms from the Stanley Park one.


So we seem to have two possibilities. This translated Japanese webpage has similar-looking flowers that it calls Gyoiko. Google hasn't done a great job with the translation.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon - Asagi or Gyoiko? Greenish white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

Wendy, I checked about Asagi in Japanese websites. But I'm not sure really Asagi cherry exits or not!
Most of the pages about Cherry say 'another name of Ukon or Gyoiko'. Because Asagi-zakura appears mostly in novels. The most famous novel in which asagi-zakura appears is written by Souseki Natsume about 100 years ago. But still there are a lot Souseki enthusiasts. On their postings there are so many talks about Asagi-Zakura.
In Botanical field only Hana-to-Midori-no Fukkou Centre (the one you found) regards Asagi a different cultivar and register it a deferent scientific name at this moment.
Another page which shows Asagi is Sakura-no-Hakubutukan (Museum of Cherry). But they write about Hana-to-Midori-no-Fukkou Centre for the reason they made a separate page.


If you can translate this page, you can know general idea about Gyoiko, Ukon and Asagi.
[Edited by wcutler: here are some versions translated by Google into English:
translated page for Gyoiko
Google calls the Ukon page Turmeric
Navigation is difficult on these pages - I'd recommend opening any links in a new tab or window. ]

Both Ukon and Gyoiko have chlorophyll in petals and Gyoiko have more. There are also stomata at the back of Gyoiko petal.
And it is said that 'each Gyoiko has diferent character' (size, color etc.)
If you can see some Japanese pages, then please check 'Ukon'. Some Ukons in Japan look very diferent and some have lines as your pictures.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon - Asagi or Gyoiko? Greenish white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

Now I think the cherry tree Wendy found in the Stanley Park is not Gyoiko.
Gyoiko has very thick petals which have Stomata at the back. It should really looks like leaves from far.
But the tree has delicate flowers. So I think it is Ukon or Asagi (if it exists)

As I wrote before some Japanese Pages have ‘Ukon’ which is very different from Ukon here.
See this page. Those pictures are taken at some ‘cherry sample garden’ by usual people. There is Gyoiko in the garden, too. (the last picture. It looks quite same!)

Ukon-zakura took very long time to spread all over Japan.( a few Hundred years) So there might be some varieties. But most of Ukon here were produced from same original Ukon trees. So most of Ukon here looks very similar.
Stanley Park has some original trees imported from Japan 50 or 60 years ago.
The tree wendy found might be one of those, so it looks very different from other Ukon here.
I believe there is a dispute about Ukon and Asagi in Japan, too. So Hana-to-Midori-no-Fukkou centre (Centre for restoration? of flowers and green) separated Asagi recently. I’m not sure which organization is the Authority of Cherry in Japan. So these are only my guess.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon - Asagi or Gyoiko? Greenish white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

Well, I think these trees on Point Grey Road at Macdonald are assumed to be Ukons. They were reported in the Kitsilano neighbourhood forum. They didn't have Kool-aid green stripes before, but they have some now, though not as much as the West End and Stanley Park trees. And they also seem to be getting some pink stripes. I can't remember what that was supposed to mean.


I think we're back to Douglas's "It would be nice to have a name here, but I doubt we'll come up with one." Or, maybe they're all within range for Ukon.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon - Asagi or Gyoiko? Greenish white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

For comparison again, the Ukon in VanDusen Garden has hardly any green stripes - I had to really look to find a blossom with the stripe in the photo.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon - Asagi or Gyoiko? Greenish white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

posted on May 14
Last week I went to check the flowers of Ukons I knew.(But I didn't have time to post!) Because I had seen Ukons both Point Grey Road and Burnaby, but I didn’t notice green stripes.
I went to Langara Golf course and Oakridge Mall. I searched thoroughly but I couldn’t find.
Then I went to 49th & Churchill. There I found a lot of flowers with green stripes. (Almost every bunch I could see flowers very close)



So I went back to Oakridge and searched again. But I couldn’t find. I found pale green flowers there, too.
Also I noticed many of Ukon flowers fall with Pedicels ( like Gyoiko). I noticed some of the pedicels which stay on the branch have small fruits.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon - Asagi or Gyoiko? Greenish white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

I'm not clarifying anything here - just adding some stuff.

We'd been forgetting to include Kizakura as a possibility, though one website describes it as "Prunus serrulata ‘Kizakura’ (clone of ‘Ukon’)". The first photo I could find is poor (but looks a lot closer than the Gioiko on the same page). There's a mention of it on a page describing Ohana-bataki (flower garden) - "An especially famous and much admired cherry tree named Kizakura (Yellowish Cherry Blossom Tree) stood near the Arched Bridge." However, I found one photo (about 4/5 down the page) that claims to be Kizakura that looks very different from anything we've seen - green petal edges. The item label is "Do you know Gyoikou?" and then says the other name is Kizakura.

I'm really mentioning it because Tara, a Parks Board person I met today, said a Japanese man had put a paper label with a name on the tree a few weeks ago (I can imagine it being the person I talked to who found out the name and tried to get the info to me!), and the name she told me sounds a bit like Kizakura, and what I wrote down from what she told me got no hits in Google. She also said she was told by another Parks Board person who used to work in this area that the tree is an Ukon.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon - Asagi or Gyoiko? Greenish white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

Wendy, as far as I know, Kizakura is another name of Ukon. When Japanese people heard the name of Kizakura, we think sake (Japanese liquor). Kizakura is a Brand name of popular sake company. ‘Ki’ means yellow. So Ki-zakura means yellow cherry blossom. Ukon means turmeric. So Ukon must be ki-zakura. But we don’t use ukon as turmeric so often. When I first heard Ukon, I thought ukon as an official rank name of old Japanese court. It sounds high-ranker and noble person. Then it connects to Gyoiko. Because ‘gyoi’ means Noble person’s clothes and ‘ko’ also means yellow. Ancient time noble person in court wore greenish yellow clothes. Those facts make the mixture of Ukon and Gyoiko among Japanese.

By the way, I finally had a chance to visit Stanley park and see the tree which Wendy found.(I could see only 1 tree at close range and 1 in the golf course from very far.) It was very different from my image of the tree from postings. First of all it is a very large tree, larger than I thought. You can see the size of the tree to compare to a man there. And flowers are greener than I thought. We can say ‘hardly show among the green foliage’ as according to Kuitert.

​

Now I think this tree might be Gyoiko. Outside petals are rather thick and greener. And the tree shape is vase shape not like old Ukon (globose, like ones at Langara Golf course).
I found sheets of ‘record of character’ of Ukon and Gyoiko. In both the first page is written in Japanese but second page is written in English. (from the Konohana-Sakuya-Hime ) They say Ukon doesn’t have ‘vexillary’ and Gyoiko has ‘Vexillary’. [note from wcutler: The links are to pdf files. If you let Adobe install the Japanese characters, you get to see the English!]

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon - Asagi or Gyoiko? Greenish white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

I agree that the Stanley Park tree doesn't look the same as in photos. To me, it's in the photos that the green blossoms could get lost among the leaves, but the Park Board people I was talking to yesterday seemed to agree that the blossoms still look quite yellow and stand out just fine from the leaves. Here are three photos that make them seem quite green, and one not so much.


Then I went to see the Barclay St tree. I think it does look different from the Stanley park one, particularly in the outside petal colour and in the stuff in the centres. But it still looks more green than Ukons, except for the blossoms that are fading to white, which Ukons are doing now too. In the second photo, both blossoms are from this tree. So there's quite a range of variation in blossom colour on the tree. I didn't see anything on the Stanley Park tree that was pink like in the last photo, but the Barclay tree is a bit later in its cycle. There were not many blossoms that were pink like that.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon - Asagi or Gyoiko? Greenish white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

The color of flowers depends on the weather. When I went there, it was cloudy and not good light for taking pictures. I didn't think they are yellow at all. They were rather white. But in your picture the flowers are rather yellow!
Actually I thought the tree inside the golf course which I couldn't see well looked more yellow and also the shape was a bit different.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon - Asagi or Gyoiko? Greenish white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

Stanley Park trees again. Now there's more green on some of the blossoms, pink striping on some, and more overall pink on others. Some are just cream-coloured. I didn't photograph those!

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon - Asagi or Gyoiko? Greenish white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

Now Barclay St again. At this stage, what's left on the tree are mostly single and white! There's also a bit of green and some pink. The third photo shows a flower with three pistils, which Ukons are not supposed to have, but probably all the other cultivar names that are in the running are also only supposed to have one pistil. And there's a small fruit.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon - Asagi or Gyoiko? Greenish white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

Now the Barclay St tree has a few interesting-looking blossoms still hanging on. The flowers still don't look like those in the Gyoiko photo in Kuitert's book, but they're definitely green (and white, and red though just a bit), and you could definitely say that the blossoms would get lost among the leaves. Now it looks more like the way the Stanley Park tree looked when we thought it was a different tree from this one.

It also shows a leaf-like structure growing out of the centre the way Kuitert mentions Shirofugens do.

The Stanley Park tree has no blossoms left at all.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon - Asagi or Gyoiko? Greenish white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

I was just going to post some photos to back up a decision to declare the Barclay St tree an Ukon, and then I saw the immediately previous posting. Phooey. Well, I'm posting the photos anyway.

The second photo shows a group of 7 trees at the Sutton Place Hotel on Burrard and Smythe. Six of the trees are Shirotae, and the one on the left is Ukon, and since it's quite young, I would assume it's quite a normal Ukon. We took a cutting from that tree over to the Barclay St tree (1st photo) and compared them. In this blossom photo, the Sutton Place cutting is on the left.


In these, the Sutton Place cutting is on the right, Barclay tree on the left. To us, they looked enough the same to think the Barclay tree would be an Ukon as well.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon - Asagi or Gyoiko? Greenish white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

The Stanley Park tree had some nice green colours on the new buds and blossoms last week, but it had some normal Ukon colouring as well.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon- Asagi or Gyoiko? Greenish white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

I saw photos on a flickr site with a lot of cultivars named. These Gyoiko buds are from Shinjuku-gyoen National park,Tokyo, and I think they look pretty similar to the ones I just posted. Same for the open flowers. She called this one an Ukon, but didn't give a location, so I don't know if they came with a tag or not.

 

Re: Not-a-Ukon - Asagi or Gyoiko? Greenish white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

The person ("Lillakanarie") who posted on the flickr site says she gets her information by poring over website information. She sent me links to the:

(Japanese) Gyoiko page on the genetics.or.jp/Sakura site. There does not seem to be a Google-translated version of it.

(Japanese) Ukon page on that site.

[Edited 2011may8 by wcutler]: Here's a (Google-translated) blog that references the pages on the National Institute of Genetics site and mentions some of the distinguishing features, though it's a bit hard to figure out which cultivar is being discussed.

 

Re: Gyoiko, and Ukon or not? Greenish white doubles, bronze leaves, mid-season

We've decided to call the Stanley Park tree 'Gyoiko'.

No-one has commented on what I've said about the Barclay tree this year. Some blossoms look like the near-by Ukon, and others look more like the Gyoiko. I think the questions are: how much green can a Ukon blossom get? and Is there something between Ukon and Gyoiko, or are all the other possible names just other words that mean Ukon?

 

Barclay St tree is 'Ukon'

[Edited 20100327 by wcutler: Mariko posted this reply in the West End Blog, in response to my posting of blossoms emerging yesterday on the Barclay St tree. I was still identifying the tree as "Not-an-Ukon". [Further edited 20100330 by wcutler: I'm buying Mariko's story, and I've changed the thread title.]

Wendy, as I said before, the Barclay tree is Ukon. Ukon can have flowers with green lines. See p214 of Gakken Book. Nowadays Asagi-akura, Kizakura and Kogane-zakura are supposed to be another name of Ukon. So only 2 official cultivars exist for yellow and green cherry. Gyoiko is supposed to be late blooming.
By the way, I can't see the translation of the Idenken site which you attatiched to Gyoiko blog, can you and other scouts?