According to the book Ornamental Cherries in Vancouver, "jugatsu-zakura" is translated as "cherry of the tenth month". The word zakura, by inference, means cherry tree. In many instances it is part of a cultivar's name. How is it that this word is used when sakura is the Japanese word for cherry tree or cherry blossom? There must be a good explanation for this curiosity.
From Japanese Flowering Cherries by Wybe Kuitert (Timber Press, Portland, Oregon, 1999), page 20: The s in sakura, the Japanese word for flowering cherry, becomes a z in the middle of a word, such as in 'Kiku-zakura'.Kuitert had already explained that the Japanese do not use hyphens or spaces between the words, but we do to make them easier to read; there is no taxonomic reasoning for this. So Kiku-zakura would really be Kikuzakura, and the z is in the middle of the word.
