Who let @Douglas Justice go off to Vietnam during cherry blossom season? At least he wrote his "Early Spring in the Botanical Garden" March blog article, which you can read at Early Spring in the Botanical Garden | UBC Botanical Garden. Here are the cultivars in bloom that Douglas mentions in the blog. Well, we can only do 10 photos in a posting now, so this will be a few postings. These cherries first appeared in this forum (and in the garden) last year in Ornamental cherries at UBCBG, which began: Prunus subhirtella 'Whitcomb': this might be the only location in the city where there are still good-looking flowers on this cultivar, as it's the first to bloom, and our early mid-season cultivars are out now. There are three of these trees. Flowers open dark pink but they fade to almost white, at which point it's hard to recognize them for this cultivar.
Prunus 'Umineko' seemed to occur as only older trees. The newer version, looking identical, with the same parents but the seed and pollen parents reversed, is 'Snow Goose', and it's showing up a lot in Parks Board and city street tree plantings. So we could sort of tell that old trees were 'Umineko' and young ones were 'Snow Goose'. Until now, when we have these new 'Umineko'. All we can hope to do to identify them is document every appearance of either of them while they still have their tags. And they had better all come with tags. The Japanese name "Umineko" refers to a seagull, also a white-feathered bird. Prunus 'Ojochin' is not open yet, but it has nice fat buds. Prunus 'Surugadai-nioi' is known in Vancouver from only one location, a private apartment building. I won't say how it was ever found, though that is documented in the forums somewhere. The single white flowers are quite delicate, and as the "-nioi" suffix indicates, it is fragrant.
Here is an update on Prunus 'Surugadai-nioi', one week later, pretty much in bloom. The leaves look a lot like 'Shirotae', a cultivar with double or semi-double flowers. There are several hundred photos of 'Shirotae' flowers in the VCBF Neighbourhood Blogs - I didn't make myself photograph them yesterday.
Prunus 'Ojochin' is just a few days from being open. It might have the best buds of any cultivar we know. Prunus 'Umineko' was totally in bloom. And Prunus subhirtella 'Whitcomb' is still refusing to give up.
These are not in the Wharton Grove, and they're not on their own roots, but they're cherries in bloom and they're growing nicely: the row of Prunus Sato-zakura Group 'Tai-haku' outside the entrance fence.
April 2, 2016. Prunus 'Ojochin' is fully open now. That's Yong and Allen, who helped me find some trees near where they live, after Douglas Justice's VCBF Tree Talk & Walk this morning. They're frequent visitors here, knew the trees in the grove by name. Prunus 'Ukon', has a tag saying 'Asagi', because Douglas used to think they were different, but he was persuaded by enough writings that there might not be such a distinction, which is so fortunate, since there are a lot of yellow-flowered cherries with various amounts of green stripes, and we would never be able to figure out the degree at which the name should be different. So 'Asagi' was removed from our Ornamental Cherries in Vancouver book and that name should be removed from this label. Unless ... These are not quite in bloom yet, though they are fully open now everywhere else in the city. Prunus 'Gyoiko' has a tag saying 'Hizakura', but now Douglas calls it 'Gyoiko' in our book and when he's talking about it. Interesting to me, we thought 'Gyoiko', which we only knew from Stanley Park, opened a week later than 'Ukon', but here where they are together, the 'Gyoiko' is in bloom ahead of the 'Ukon'. Prunus 'Shirotae' - I only have one 'Shirotae' photo. It's past blooming most places in the city, but still looks pretty good here.
I learned from Wybe Kuitert, Japanese Flowering Cherries, Timber Press, 1999, p134, that "[t]he [cherry] tree sheds the stipules shortly after the foliage unfolds." Our Prunus 'Gyoiko' (with the tag saying 'Hizakura') hasn't caught up on its reading. It's now about three months since these trees have opened their leaves, and these stipules are numerous and impressive.
At the Wharton Cherry Grove on April 17, 2017 with Wendy Cutler. 'Surugadai-nioi' 'Gyoiko' 'Shirotae'
Also at the Wharton Cherry Grove, but a couple of days earlier - April 15, 2017. Three young 'Umineko' in bloom.
The two 'Ojochin' are just starting to bloom, April 20, 2017. Here are emerging leaves (maybe the best of any cherry!) and stipules.
'Ojochin' is in bloom now. The last photo shows one of the interesting characteristics of this cultivar, though it may not be unique to this cultivar (also exhibited by the Nitobe tree we've been calling Ojochin, which may turn out to be something else): many of the leaves have attenuated tips, but others have rounded ends with no tips. The 'Ukon' (tag still says Asagi) should be in bloom in five days or so, and 'Gyoiko' (tag still says Hizakura) seems several days behind it, many buds not showing any petals peeking through at all. Last year I was surprised that it bloomed ahead of the 'Ukon', as in Stanley Park it was usually later blooming. This year, when nothing else is following any rules, 'Gyoiko' has read the book and is following rules. The 'Gyoiko' here is a clone of the Stanley Park tree.