Next day, same Nicola mini-park location. I suspect we've seen the best from these trees this year. Nighttime temperatures are forecast to be mostly -5/-6, [edited] one night -8, for another week.
The previous two postings show trees with one limb remaining, which has been the case for them for several years - maybe I never saw the one on Nicola with two limbs. Here are photos of the trees in Nicola mini-park at Pendrell, and behind the Eugenia condo at Pendrell and Gilford. I am so surprised that most of the 'Whitcomb' blossoms seem to have survived the frost, even those the ones I've seen so far are in the warmer neighbourhoods where the trees had lots of open flowers when the frost hit. This was not the case last year, which in most neighbourhoods was a washout for this cultivar.
On the north side of Pendrell Street, west of Gilford you can compare ‘Somei-yoshino’ and ‘Akebono’ side by side. First photo taken from friend’s balcony. ‘Somei-yoshino’ is the upper tree with some green leaves and whitish blossoms. ‘Akebono’ is the lower tree with pinker blossoms and no leaves visible. ‘Somei-yoshino’ blossoms showing star centres. ‘Akebono’ blossoms pinker and no signs of star centres.
I think the star thing depends on how they're facing and whether the sun is shining through them. 'Akebono' have stars too, but they're smaller. Just above, you can see the small star on the flower to the left of the front blossom with the petaloid. In your posting before last, the top flower has a small star. It's not a very reliable indicator. There is an 'Akebono' star in the centre of the larger cluster here. Most of the blossoms are facing down, so you don't get to see the flowers straight on, and they're not back-lit. That's probably another unreliable indicator - whether the flowers are facing out flat or the petals are drooping. The star reveals the size of the sepals, but the size difference between the two cultivars isn't always that noticeably different, though @Mariko did say at https://forums.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/threads/ubc.36223/page-14#post-447201 that 'Somei-yoshino' has longer sepals. I don't totally get it - the stars are much larger than the sepal length, and 'Akebono' petals seem more round, which should give them larger stars if the petal overlap is what makes the stars seem so much larger than the sepal length.
One of my favourite ‘Akebono’ trees should be blooming in a few more days. On Beach, west of Broughton.
A good location to view ‘Somei-yoshino’ and ‘Akebono’ simultaneously is the grove of trees east of the Stanley Park Causeway. ‘Somei-yoshino’ blossoms are definitely whitish. ‘Akebono’ blossoms are pinker and the trees have no witch’s broom. Sometimes you see a petaloid on ‘Akebono’.
They're coming along nicely, except for the third one nearest the water (behind the tables on the left), which started life as 'Akebono' too. I even wrote to the Parks Board two years in a row, and they said they'd remove the rootstock growth, but they didn't.
You mean those 'Akebono' trees have no witch's broom, and 'Akebono' trees are supposed to be resistant to it. But it's so rife on cherries in Stanley Park that they all seem to get it. Here are some 'Akebono' with witch's broom. First photo is to establish that this is 'Akebono'. In Devonian Harbour Park, near the walkway through the middle. The trees at the old bus loop. Speaking of the set of 'Akebono' trees just above, the ones across the street are almost fully open. There are three missing on the right side, and one about to go on the left. Ha, lost my focus there. Back to witch's broom, on other Stanley Park trees, the remaining 'Autumnalis Rosea' at Lost Lagoon: The old 'Pandora' has so much witch's broom that it's hard to see the blossoms.
Here are a few over-excited cherry scout photos, first flowers on mid-season cherries. 'Takasago' on Broughton at Haro. 'Shirotae' at Chilco mini-park. The older 'Shirotae' trees at Lost Lagoon are just at the swelling bud stage.
The big old Sargent Hybrid tree at the end of Comox Street is in full bloom. I see now that there are two younger ones nearby; I didn't remember anything about those.
Mid-season trees are fully open. When the sun was out, 'Takasago' flowers on one tree I pass every day looked white and not so interesting. But yesterday in the rain, the buds glistened among the pinky-white flowers. The densely-packed blossoms sort-of blocked out all the dry rot, but it's still almost impossible to get a photo without the dry-rot appearing. Fuzzy stems are distinctive. Tree on Cardero at Barclay: From a tree on Comox at Broughton: The 'Shirotae' on Broughton at Ted Northe Lane has a nice shape when seen from the lane, but it has suffered pruning, probably deliberate and from trucks, as seen from the sidewalk. Hairy leaf margins are notable. Here is a very large 'Shirotae' on the property at 1424 Comox 'Umineko' and 'Shirotae' at 1500 Pendrell 'Kanzan' pedicels have definitely elongated, with all buds open and some starting to swell.
Pair of 'Ichiyo' hanging over Ted Northe lane near Cardero, around the corner from, so easy to compare with the first 'Takasago' in the previous posting. The 'Ichiyo' have much larger flowers, not such tightly compressed puffs of flowers, and the pedicels (flower stems) have no hairs. The 'Takasago' flowers on Broughton are showing off their aging with red centres.
'Ama-no-gawa' at Kensington Place on Beach Avenue at Nicola, past their peak. Mikuruma-gaeshi on Barclay near Denman.
