Yesterday evening (May 2) I found one cherry tree which I think I haven't seen at the SW corner of the 37th & Collingwood. It's at the finishing stage unfortunately. It’s very difficult to identify. But it has very very small flowers and they fall off not by petals but by flowers. I remembered the branch which Douglas brought to the Scouts Meeting. I think it was Pendula Pendula. But I think it was weeping cherry. This is the picture I took at the meeting.
Re: What cherry? Pendula PenduLa??? Interesting. The flowers of Prunus pendula would show more of a bulge around the ovary (and pubescence) and I wouldn't expect a single flowered form of that species to hold its flowers this late. The flowers look a bit like those on 'Pink Shell' (see below), at least from what I can see. Note the crowded blossoms and narrow petals. The age of the tree (about 40 years?) disqualifies 'Pink Shell', but with the number and variety of cherries in Vancouver, it's just as possible that this is another obscure cultivar of similar parentage. I would guess that the recent cold weather is responsible for the flowers hanging on so long, and the flowers dropping whole is probably a result of the flowers not being fertilized.
Re: What cherry? Pendula PenduLa??? Although the bell shape of the trunk below the branches can be taken to indicate that this is the scion part of a grafted tree - maybe not. Maybe it is actually a seedling used for rootstock, grown from open-pollinated seed and not fitting a named cherry species or cultivar exactly. The 'Kanzan' behind it have similar tall straight trunks and might perhaps be what this one had grafted onto it. Not that I think this cultivar is this tree but for a short time I grew a small specimen of the 'Colt' cherry being used currently as a dwarfing rootstock for both orchard and flowering cherries and it produced melon-scented pink flowers. White-flowered sweet cherries won't be the only ones encountered that were planted originally as rootstocks.
Re: What cherry? Pendula PenduLa??? Today I went to Queen Elizabeth Park to seach late blooming cherry. But I couldn't. Instead I found a tree same as this question tree west of the pond near newly planted Yae-beni-shidare (or Beni-shidare). It locates back of a Japanese Maple. There is a Beni-Shidare tree near there. So I thought they might be also Beni-Shidare with broken limbs and cut twigs. I can't think they are Pink Shell. Pink shell was one of the flowers you brought to the meeting, Douglas. I brought back the brunches left after the meeting and kept in the vase at home. Pink shell was very short, so you can see at the edge of vase and there were 2 branches of Pendula Pendula at the down left. I think Pink shell is a very pretty cherry flower bigger than Pendula Pendula and Beni-shidare. If there is Pink shell at the cornor of the collingwood & 37th, I should have noticed it. But I didn't realise there was an unique cherry tree until I went to check Kanzans on 37th.(37th from Dumber to collingwood is a street of Kanzans.) Anyway, it is not worth talking about the finished cherry. We can't identifiy. We have to check the tree earlier next year.
Re: What cherry? Pendula PenduLa??? I'm wrapping this up, as the tree that started this thread turned out to be 'Stellata'. It has been posted in the Dunbar neighbourhood. A lot of the blossoms in the photos here don't look representative at all, but you can see some of the curled in petal edges in one of the photos, and the tiny blossom compared to a quarter in one of Mariko's photos.
Thank you, Wendy. I recognized it as a Stellata last year and posted it at Dunbar thread just a little. Because the pictures were not good enough to identify. I was thinking to visit there again and forgot. Joseph's pictures are so beautiful! Anyway stellata flowers stay on the tree very long time and look like a faded Beni-shidare.
