Identification: Shirotae - double whites, green leaves, spreading, mid-season

This is not a question, but comments and corrections are very welcome.

Shirotae, which we call Mount Fuji on this continent*, are a flat-topped spreading tree with big handsome double white blossoms that do not get at all lost among the green leaves that emerge at the same time. The first two photos were taken in Vancouver BC on April 7, 2007. The third is from March 29, and the last is Joseph Lin's from March 28. I've added the last two to try to provide a better comparison with Shogetsu.

* edited by wcutler 2012apr5: just for the record, we are not calling 'Shirotae' Fuji or Mount Fuji.

 

Re: Shirotae (Mount Fuji) – double whites, green leaves, spreading, mid-season

Depends on who "we" is. I call it 'Shirotae', which is how it is listed in books such as NORTH AMERICAN LANDSCAPE TREES (Jacobson) which gave 'Mt. Fuji' or 'Mount Fuji' as synonyms, and THE HILLIER MANUAL OF TREES & SHRUBS, which lists it as 'Shirotae' ('Mount Fuji').

"In the early twentieth century it was exported to Europe and North America as 'Mount Fuji'. The snow-capped mountain with its perfect cone shape was a preeminent symbol of the exotic Land of the Rising Sun. The name appealed to the fashionable Western public, but can lead now to confusion with the Fuji cherry (P. incisa)"

--Kuitert, JAPANESE FLOWERING CHERRIES

 

Re: Shirotae (Mount Fuji) – double whites, green leaves, spreading, mid-season

I learned this Flowering Cherry as being
Shirotae. As I remember it Hillier's plant
did come to them as being Mount Fuji but
their plant is not the same as Mount Fuji
is in the Kansai region of Japan. Shirotae
does not have quite the ruffle in the center
of the flower as either Fuji or Mount Fuji
have. I was first told years ago from a
Japanese nurseryman that Mount Fuji
and Fuji were selected forms of Shirotae.
Another difference is that some Shirotae
are more semi-double in flower whereas
both Fuji and Mount Fuji are double flowers
in comparison.

Jim

 

Re: Shirotae (Mount Fuji) – double whites, green leaves, spreading, mid-season

Ok , I'm a little confused. I love these flat topped semi or double pure white flowering cherries. I purchased 2 for my own garden labeled as "Mt. Fuji". They are pure white (no pink even in bud) and tend to be semi-double (some single flowers). At a nursery I noticed they had a number of trees they labelled Shirotae (not Mt. Fuji). These looked different. The buds had a pinkness to the outer petal and tended to be fully double. A more full flower and a pink overcast. Are Shirotae and Mt. Fujii different (or the same) cultivars? My Mt. Fuji's are less full and whiter than these Shirotae. Is there that much variation in the individual trees or are they really different cultivars.

Wynn

 

Re: Shirotae (Mount Fuji) – double whites, green leaves, spreading, mid-season

'Shogetsu' has sometimes been mixed up in commerce with 'Shirotae' ('Mt Fuji').

 

Re: Shirotae (Mount Fuji) – double whites, green leaves, spreading, mid-season

I've been really taken with the fat Shirotae buds (is that what you call these things before the flower buds have burst out of them?). The second ones at the UBC Asian Centre Parkade seem to be coming along as quickly as the one in the West End, which was taken only five days earlier.

 

Re: Shirotae (Mount Fuji) – double whites, green leaves, spreading, mid-season

The "things" are the scales of the winter buds.

 

What cherries - white single-double, late mid-season, mostly bronze leaves

I thought these trees at Regent College, across from University Village, were Shirotae, but Douglas talked about how fresh Shirotae look with their green leaves, and these for the most part do not have fresh green leaves. They're on our list as Shogetsu and Shirofugen, but none of these really look like those to me. Neither of those cultivars is more than just opening in the west end, and these trees are almost finished. Shirofugen would never finish that fast, and wouldn't be going brown on the edges before they turn pink and they won't do that surely till June this year. All the trees are fairly young, but some are very young, and some of them look different from others of them.




The young ones have greener leaves but very small flowers relative to the cultivars in question.


These were just a few of the blossoms on one of the trees that look like all the others.


This tree has hardly anything left, but I thought the blossoms looked like the Stanley Park Memorial Ojochin/Ariake, but the sepals are serrated and I can't tell if they sort of point up at the tips or not.

 

Re: What cherries - white single-double, late mid-season, mostly bronze leaves

If not 'Shirotae' then very similar. 'Shogetsu' forms a thin mushroom of a tree with pompoms of flowers between sections of bare branch as does 'Pink Perfection'; 'Shirofugen' has markedly purple young leaves on a particularly tabular crown looking like a cloud bank when in bloom. Another seen down here mixed with 'Shirotae' in plantings, as though being sold as 'Shirotae' has been identified by A.L. Jacobson as 'Hosokawa-nioi'. Although of similar coloring it produces an obviously different, smaller single flower. I've also seen 'Hosokawa' listed a couple places on the internet incorrectly as a synonym of 'Shirotae'.

 

Re: What cherries - white single-double, late mid-season, mostly bronze leaves

I'm familiar with these trees. They are 'Shirotae'.

 

Here's a summer Shirotae leaf photo.

 

Here's the description from Ornamental Cherries of Vancouver, by UBCBG's Douglas Justice.