This tree at 1020 Nanaimo (east side of Nanaimo, south of Parker Street) is in full bloom and shedding on March 19, 2011. However, it does not look like any of the early cherries, with its mid-sized, almost white, 5 petaled flowers. Two more trees, not as fully opened, are across on the west side of Nanaimo (in Grandview-Woodland), along with an Accolade.
Re: Hastings-Sunrise Hi, Ann, I think you found a new kind of cherries in Vancouver. I think it must be Fuyu-zakura in Japan when I saw the pictures. Fuyu means winter in Japanese. Fuyu-zakura is a hybrid of Mame-zakura and blooms twice in Japan. It is not very rare. I posted it several times on the thread of "Cherries in Japan" I post here some pictures of Fuyu-zakura I think I didn't post.
Re: Hastings-Sunrise-Unknown I went to see these flowers around 10 am this morning. The shape of the tree is not straight as Pandora. The branches are full of lichen & mosses. Flowers looks like Pandora, but more whitish and crowded. Several nearby trees are Autumnalis Rosea.
Re: Fuyu-zakura - single white, early blooming Maybe the same as the 'Fudan-zakura' seen in Victoria.
Re: Fuyu-zakura - single white, early blooming I went to see the Nanaimo St tree today. It looks more similar to me to the Victoria tree we called 'Fudan-zakura' than it does to the ones you've posted, Mariko. It's a very chunky tree - goblet shaped, thick branches more like 'Takasago' except with a lot of infill branching going off in all directions. But I think my Stanley Park tree at the heronry looks more like your 'Fuyu-zakura' photos. More delicate, not so dense. Of course, being in deep shade probably distorts its natural shape. There are more photos at What cherry? Single white blossoms, early. The Victoria and the Nanaimo St trees both seem to have a lot of brown rot, but the Stanley Park one does not. We really didn't start talking about the Stanley Park tree here, but I'm trying to take the 'Fuyu-zakura' ID for that one. The thing is, in one of the postings in the Cherries in Japan thread, you've said 'Fuyu-zakura' and 'Fuyan-zakura' might be the same There are some photo links there. Now I'm lost. Can we call the Nanaimo St tree 'Fudan-zakura' and the Stanley Park one 'Fuyu-zakura'?
Re: Fuyu-zakura - single white, early blooming Might be. After I saw Joseph's photos of flowers, I'm not quite sure they are Fuyu-zakura. Anyway, they are not Pandora. The reason I first thought they were Fuyu-zakura is the branches are full of lichen & mosses. I have seen rather old Fuyu-zakura like those in Japan. But I didn't take pictures of them, because I felt they were dirty looking. I haven't seen Fudan-zakura or I can't identify it. Both Fuyu-zakura and Fudan-zakura bloom in winter and continue blooming till spring. Fuyu-zakura might have a bit of rest before spring flowers but Fudan-zakura continue blooming from winter to spring. Fuyu means winter and Fudan means "never ending" in Japanese. Both sometimes look very similar by photos. They have single white flowers and winter flowers and spring flowers are different. Gakken book says Fuyu-zakura is a hybrid of Mame-zakura and it has short calyx with no hair. Fudan-zakura is a hybrid of Yama-zakura and Oshima-zakura which have characters of those. I'm not quite sure.
Re: Fuyu-zakura - single white, early blooming Thanks for those translated links, Mariko. I haven't seen calyxes like the ones shown in either photo. I went out to try to follow a suggestion Ron usually makes to take cuttings and compare them, but I couldn't reach even a single blossom on the Nanaimo St tree. We need Douglas and his ladder.
Re: Fuyu-zakura - single white, early blooming Jacobson, North American Landscape Trees (1996, Ten Speed Press, Berkeley) says 'Fudan-zakura' blooms either all winter or all at once, ahead of other Sato cherries. Similar behavior is shown by 'Autumnalis Rosea' in this region, the blooming is not the same every year. In addition to discussing multiple pertinent anatomical details - something this thread should be getting into, if the cherries brought up are to be effectively compared and sorted - Jacobson mentions that apparently the North American clone of 'Fudan-zakura' is not the same as the one described by Japanese references of the time, due to a difference in hairiness of leaves.
Re: Fuyu-zakura or not? - single white, early blooming So the assumption that this has not been in bloom all winter does not rule out 'Fuyu-zakura'? I saw a photo on flickr that shows semi-double blossoms that look more like 'Autumnalis Rosea'. We don't know of course where the person got this ID, but it looks like it would have come from the named Japanese garden. [edited by wcutler 2011mar29: I removed my reference to the photo Joseph deleted].
Re: Fuyu-zakura or not? - single white, early blooming In case of confusion, I took away my last photo "Autumnalis Rosea on this thread.
Janet Gabites has taken some photos of the 'Fudan-zakura', these of the tree in all the previous postings, and this tree across the street, that we think is the same, though we were not entirely certain. There is a larger tree across the lane from this one, which we also thought was the same. We didn't seem to take or get blossom photos from that one. I'm not sure it's worth worrying about what this thing is, as it doesn't seem long for this world, but it's lower to the ground and reachable. So the good news is, Douglas, you could reach it to take cuttings, but the bad news is, you probably wouldn't want cuttings from it.
Looking at Mariko's photos of kanzakura, I'm wondering why we haven't considered kanzakura as an ID for these trees. Here's a Fudan-zakura photo on flickr from Brooklyn Botanic Garden that looks less like our flowers than kanzakura, particularly the view of the sepals in the background
