Yvonne McLean, last year's scout, asked Wendy the ID of this cherry and Wendy forward the e-mail to me. So I visited the tree today (April 29).It locates at the NW corner of W 22nd and Balsam. It is a little too late to identify the tree but it looks like white Pendula grafted. It doesn't look like weeping so much, but I think the tree couldn't get taller becouse it grafted so weeping branches get thicker and had more flowers. White Pendula is not as common as Beni-shidare (red Pendula) in Vancouver. In Japan Pendula (= weeping cherry = Shidare-zakura) is usually white. We are not very sure how to call them, either. In my image, white pendula has flowers like Somei-yoshino but a little small. But this tree is very interesting because it has many flowers with extra petals (more than Akebono) and some look like double flowers. *Both pictuers show the same flower which looks like 2 flowers got together. I know only 1 white Pendula at the south entrance of a Parking lot at Yew and W 42nd. I didn't realise it had flowers with extra petals. It looks quite different.
Re: White Pendula grafted? It looks a lot like the tree Joseph Lin and I are calling 'Umbrella', since no-one will name ours, except I've never seen double blossoms on my West End Umbrellas. It's too bad the name 'Washi-no-o' has already been taken - those petals certainly look like they'd fit the "eagle's tail" description. Well, I'd ask if it was fragrant, but the peduncles seem too long and the blossoms too small for it to be an over-controlled Washi-no-o. The most I'm hoping for is for advice about whether I should merge this thread with the one I referenced here.
Re: White Pendula grafted? There are many single-flowered white Japanese flowering cherry cultivars. To figure "Umbrella" out you may have to study its anatomical details using multiple references.
Re: White Pendula grafted? The similar West End trees are just about finished. Here are photos from the Comox St tree at the north end of the property and the one on Haro, showing one extra petaloid on each blossom, but I had to look hard to find these examples. The first blossom shows five petals but one is clearly missing.
Re: White Pendula grafted? I think they might be Shidare-yamazakura. (Japanese web page) Shidare-yamazakura is a white weeping cherry which also has character of Yama-zakura.( Leaves come together with flowers.) Anyway it's very difficult to identify these trees. Because grafting and pruning made the tree shapes. It's very hard to guess how the natural shape is.
Re: White Pendula grafted? Whew - I searched on the last part of the url and got Google to translate the result, so here's Mariko's link in English. If you don't like Google's choice of words you can mouse over the text and contribute a better translation yourself. Links from this page are also in English!
Re: White Pendula grafted? I'm tidying up some unanswered questions as I come to them, now that we're reviewing for the new edition of the Ornamental Cherries in Vancouver book. We have decided these are 'Sendai-shidare'. The last one in the first posting is 'Snofozam'.
Here is a 'Snofozam' just acquired by its building last month. It's a very unhairy specimen at this point, but it has its tag still attached and that is what it looks like. It has a very nice structure, though, not top grafted. The leaves are sort-0f double-serrated, not hair-tipped. Not far away, on Haro at Chilco, is a 'Sendai-shidare' for comparison, very nicely left to drape to the ground. The lack of hairs on this should be a distinguishing feature, but it's not in this case because the 'Snofozam' seems equally glabrous, at least in my photos. These leaves are hair-tipped, and the flowers are stiffer than on the 'Snofozam'. I always thought the the twisted limbs were grafted on these, but on this specimen that's not the case - there is a branch growing from the trunk that is the same.