This tree is past its prime blooming period, but it is full of blossoms, at the same time that the latest of the late ornamental cherries are in bloom (except serrula, which will be out this week or next). Kuitert (Japanese Flowering Cherries) keys it out to Prunus serrulata var. pubescens, which is also known as P. verecunda or Kasumi-zakura, Korean mountain cherry. Is that different from Korean hill cherry? The description fits in some respects, but he doesn't mention those serious sepal edges, which would be the first thing I'd mention. Also, that cultivar is supposed to have hairs on the leaf undersides and hardly any awns on the leaves, and I think this is different in both respects. It's hard to see Gakken's photo (Flowering Cherries in Japan) on page 46-47 (called Cerasus leveilleana; Mariko said the Japanese says Kasumi-zakura), but the sepals don't look similar. This tree is on the south side of the UBC parking lot at Agricultural Road, across Lower Mall from the First Nations Longhouse. The blossoms were 3cm, white, single, no apparent phylloids or staminodes. No fragrance. Peduncles are very long, and there were generally four pedicels in an umbel formation hanging from the peduncle, with sometimes another one or two a little above them. This was the best I could do for a bud photo. Stems and calyxes were hairy, and there were more than just this one flower with an extra sepal. Sepals have long spiked edges. There was one Siamese twin. There was no obvious difference in colour to the leaf front and back. Leaf edges are more coarse than 'Somei-yoshino'.
The tree looks an awful lot like 'Somei-yoshino', but obviously, it's much later. Trees that are infected with witch's broom (and there are lots of infected trees in this area) produce their flowers this late. However, I had a look at the tree and it appears completely clean. As well, the flowering seems pretty uniform, unlike the more spotty pattern in infected trees. On the other hand, trees under stress often display aberrant growth, including delayed flowering—for example, we have a transplanted Magnolia stellata in the garden just coming into bloom now—so there might be some underlying problem that we can't see. Or maybe it's just a weird seedling of 'Somei-yoshino' that nobody noticed before (though, I'm not convinced). This is one of those cases where I think we'll need to look at it next year, when, presumably, we'll have a "normal" flowering season.
I looked that up. Wikipedia says it refers to "cylindrical tissue [becoming] elongated perpendicularly to the direction of growth, producing flattened, ribbon-like, crested, or elaborately contorted tissue". Where are you seeing that? In the twin stem where the two petioles are joined?
