I'm posting six locations - some of them Spire and some not, but I don't know which is which and I don't know if I'm posting three cultivars or four. Spire Here's what we've been calling Spire, identified by Ron last year and I can't remember if Douglas expressed concurrence or not. Spire These trees at Kits Beach above the Showboat look the same to me. Here's why no closeup of the flower with coin comparison P. sargentii hybrids [edited by wcutler 20090713: from discussion with Douglas Justice - we're going with Yama-zakura, Japanese mountain cherry, Prunus serrulata var. spontanea] [edited by wcutler 20090906: well, they're not Yama-zakura - we're back to trying to figure it out again. Now we're working on identifying it as a P. sargentii x P. incisa hybrid, known under the name P. x syodoi] [edited again 2012jan05 by wcutler]: Now we're calling them Sargentii hybrids.We have a Unknown sargentii hybrid, was Syodoi - mid-season, single-white, double-serrated in the Cultivar IDs forum - see posting #4 for a description.] Now, here are three trees that were said by a good authority to be Spire, but I now [edited by wcutler 20090416] know they're not. They're on Oak St outside VanDusen Botanical Garden. [edited 2012jan05: actually, they're not there at all any more]. The third one is really just to show you the hail - I want brownie points for this, and how come Joseph's photos below show blue sky is what I want to know. Not only does he get around, but he times it right too. P. sargentii hybrids [edited by wcutler 20090713: from discussion with Douglas Justice - we're going with Yama-zakura, Japanese mountain cherry, Prunus serrulata var. spontanea] [edited by wcutler 20090906: Scratch that. Possibly another P. sargentii x P. incisa hybrid, known under the name P. x syodoi]. I've added leaf photos. [edited again 2012jan05 by wcutler]: Now we're calling them Sargentii hybrids.We have a Unknown sargentii hybrid, was Syodoi - mid-season, single-white, double-serrated in the Cultivar IDs forum - see posting #4 for a description.] I posted these trees last night at 3rd and Balsam as Japanese Mountain Cherry, and Joseph Lin ran right over today to get better pictures for me, so these are his, except for my one with the quarter. Now that I see the sepals in his photos, I think maybe they're not the same as the one we're calling Mountain cherry, and I think they look sort of similar to the Oak St cherries. [edited 20090417 by wcutler:]Here are more photos of these trees, from April 17, 2009 And leaves from September 6, 2009 Colt [Edited by wcutler 2010feb22: this tree is now featured in its own thread, and and the writeup here has been copied to there]. [Edited by wcutler 2011apr2: we got this last year - 'Colt', which was the rootstock that took over the tree; it probably was planted as a 'Kanzan'.] Now we're on to one that Douglas thought might be Spire, at 8th and Arbutus. This is not the same as the others. I talked the church-school people into letting me into the yard, so the pictures are better than what I posted in the Kits blog last night. [Edited by wcutler Oct 28, 2008: I've added a fall colour shot of this tree] Joseph just sent me these three photos, which are a big improvement and which he didn't even have to get into the yard to get, or did you, Joseph? This is growing out of the branch from the trunk with the red blood-looking splotch. It looks like when these were planted, someone stuck a bouquet in the ground of three branches of whatever and one of this thing. Schmittii And last, Joseph's trees on 6th between Arbutus and Yew, north side, across the street from three Pandoras. The shapely calyxes made me think they were similar to the 8th Avenue tree, but the sepals look different and those 8th Ave pedicels are much longer than any of these others. Joseph posted some new photos of these in the Kits blog today. The last two photos are his. I was there too today, but I missed him again!
Re: Spires or what? Ungrafted spires? Based on the sepal shape and petal shape, I've decided these trees at 51st and Arbutus look like my West End gas station trees, except they look really nice. They don't look grafted - there are suckers coming out from the trunks of the same cultivar, not that I thought to take a photo of that. But the sepals don't match the Oak St known-to-be-Spires [20081030 - now thought to be Pandoras - wcutler]. And I can't really distinguish these single whites. [edited by wcutler 20090415] I should really just delete all the garbage I entered above, but anyway, these are now thought to be Pandora. Pandora
Re: Spires or what? Single pinky-white, bronze leaves, upright shape That extra sepal should be a hint, no? I don't know what it hints to, but don't some cultivars do that and others not?
Re: Spires or what? Single pinky-white, bronze leaves, upright shape The first ones look like 'Spire', most or all of the rest don't. The hairy ones with the bulbous ovaries etc. look the same as Prunus x schmittii shown in the Eyewitness Handbook (and by Google), as I have related elsewhere here. To get them all sorted out you have to study and compare specific anatomical features, as listed by D. Justice on one of these threads.
There's lots of is-it-this and isn't-it-that going on in this thread. Since 'Spire' is one of the cultivars identified, and this is the only 'Spire' thread in this forum, I'm including this cultivar's pages from Ornamental Cherries of Vancouver, by UBCBG's Douglas Justice.
