New Trees in Yaletown View attachment 121998 [/ATTACH]The city has been busy planting new trees on the Yaletown streets. This is just outside Helmcken Park. Others are on Hamilton near those trees by Lupo. The ones previously posted are actually part of Jardines Lookout residences but the new ones are on the sidewalk.
Re: Emery Barnes Park Nothing has been added or removed at least for the year and there are cherry trees of one variety or another just coming into bloom on both sides of Davie St. between Homer and Richards. A few blooms of Kanzan are already showing with a promise of more to come.
Sorry, you snuck in another posting before I posted my answer, so I've edited my reply to add the quote indicating what I was responding to. I'm happy with what Douglas and I said about the 'Kanzan'. They're posted correctly.
Ukon @ Expo x Pacific Blvd + Kanzen These 8 Ukon are back in bloom while the 1 Kanzen is just starting.
Dunsmuir bike lane The canopy of Kanzan's on the Dunsmuir bike lane are blooming but with such a wide street, the canopy is not as dominant as on the narrower side streets. Still a nice view in what is otherwise a concrete desert canyon.
New Rancho's @ Cambie St. & Pacific Blvd You are right - a freshly installed creation right out of the studio! (partner to the tree shown earlier). Note that another new tree nearby is a maple (Acer Pacific Sunset).
Davie St. - Homer to Richards A nice canopy of more than a dozen blossoming 'Kanzan' now on view in the Yaletown core.
Kanzan's @ Victory Square & Playhouse Two old Kanzan's blossoming in Victory Square by the monument and up the street some younger ones just by the Playhouse.
Only three 'Pink Perfection' remain in the courtyard and in the back at 1500 Howe. The third photo shows a 'Kanzan' in the foreground, with the 'Pink Perfection' in the back. I think it's not visible but there's avium rootstock growth on the the one in the second photo, so that will likely not be there much longer. The flowers really are pretty. You can see the vexillate filaments on the stamens in the second photo, as well as one or two second-story flowers.
Downtown Core Still lots of blossoms in the downtown core for the Sun Runners to enjoy. Might be gone though for Marathoners.
Homer St. across from Post Office These 13 Shirofugen's on Homer St. between Dunsmuir and West Georgia across from the Post Office are about finished but today they were still looking good.
Re: Homer St. across from Post Office Finished? They haven't even turned pink yet, and the leaves haven't turned green yet! You mean finished in their first guise. They get to be considered "in bloom" for weeks yet, as they keep changing their appearance.
Re: Homer St. across from Post Office This is great news as a treat for the 8,000+ half marathon runners and walkers going by on May 4! They start at QE Park so hopefully there will be blossoms there to enjoy. Finish is near Canada Place downtown - mostly concrete there but probably only spectators care about views at that point :)
[Edited] Don't believe a word I said about the ID of these trees. See the next posting. I run into cherry scout Sue Wagner once a year, usually when I'm on foot and she can give me a ride. On the way home, she showed me these two young trees under the Granville Bridge. Here is a single 'Pink Perfection', looking quite good actually. And what might be 'Shogetsu', also looking not bad. Maybe it looks so good because it's not that. The stems look right, peduncles too long for 'Ichiyo', but it looks too fluffy for 'Shogetsu'. There's a big outrageous development project for this area just in the woo-the-public stage, so who knows what will become of these trees. Sue told me there is a 'Pandora' around the corner, in with the Schmitt Cherries; I'd love to remember to go see it next year.
Everything I said in the previous posting is wrong, which isn't to say that everything I'm saying now is right. The pink tree has to be 'Kanzan'. I went back today and photographed several flowers. Not a single vexillate filament, not a single two-story flower. I think the leaves are so green because of the deep shade in this area under the bridge. You can see two earlier-blooming cherry trees here, which I hope to remember to see next year. The green leaves on the white-flowered tree also lead me astray, though I did have my doubts about that yesterday. Now I remember the 'Shiro-fugen' trees under a glass canopy on the side of the building at 400 W. Georgia, also with green leaves when the flowers were white. Here I think the lack of sun would have the same effect. The fluffy blossoms and the lack of fringed edges, very long stems, leads me to say 'Shiro-fugen'.
West Georgia / Sun Run Timing is everything. The Kanzan blossoms along West Georgia provided a fine view for all the Sun Run participants as they began their 10k experience.
Bayshore Hotel - Conundrum There is a profusion of of white cherry blossoms at the Bayshore Hotel - the map page indicates previous identification of some trees as Shogetsu and Amanogawa. This grove of trees is mostly Shogetsu but has one Shirotae (blossoms of 6 or 7 sepals). The Amanogawa was in a side courtyard that I apparently missed. [May 18 edit - all downtown cherry blossoms have all disappeared now. Rhodo's & magnolia's blooming now]
The 'Ama-no-gawa' is in the inside courtyard (well, enclosed on three sides), at the SE corner. Yaletowner, I missed you yesterday - since I thought I'd understood the difference from looking at the tree under the bridge, I decided to go back to look at these Bayshore trees. I decided there are no 'Shirofugen', no 'Gyoiko' (well, I didn't consider that, but now that you've said that, no); one 'Shirotae' on the east side of the building (that should be the one with so few petals), with four 'Shogetsu'. Pro 'Shogetsu': fringed petal edges, flat open flowers, flowers aging by drying out, not by going pink and they fall generally in petals, not whole flowers. I don't have anything pro 'Shiro-fugen' from yesterday. Not fluffy blossoms, not aging pink, leaves green with white flowers - that combo isn't happening on 'Shiro-fugen' in the sun, at least not this year. When 'Shiro-fugen' have such white flowers, the leaves are still bronze. Your photo in Fairview helped too, with the blossoms in big balls rather than the sparcer tiered effect of the photo in our book. These looked pretty much like that.
Another comment on the Bayshore trees - the planting next to the driveway used to have five trees, and now there are three. (See this posting in Ornamental Cherries). One that's missing was clearly a better-looking tree than the ones to its left. I'm sure that was a 'Shirofugen'.
It's time already for the lame photo of the first blossom. This time I really did catch the first opening. In 2010, our previous early year, I figured I'd missed it by a week when I did the Feb 16 posting. Full bloom that year was on February 28, 19 days after my calculated first flowers date. On that basis, because it's been warm but not all that warm, I'm guessing three weeks, so full bloom on March 11. I used to say 25-30 days, which would put them open on March 28 latest. That would work well for the festival's opening the following week, but that's very optimistic (that we would have bad enough weather to slow these down). This photo is of the Kobus magnolias in the same location, usually in bloom with the cherries, though this year it looks like they're going to be open first.
Choices Yaletown (Davie & Richards) The last of the old trees has been cut down and only the younger ones planted in the past few years remain. The last old tree had a major branch splinter off in the big wind storm last fall and then must not have done well with the December deep cold spell we had. The stump remains so it will be interesting to see what new planting gets to use the space now. It seems like Yaletown is later than the other neighbourhoods nearby with cherry blossoms now as usual since there is no buds other than magnolias showing yet.