There might not be an official festival this year, but it's been pretty exciting on the cherry front. We're still finding new locations we hadn't known of, and new cultivars. We though we had a one-of-a-kind 'Kiku-zakura' in the West End, and then yesterday, Joseph Lin found a street with 16 of them. Joseph, did you really take 300 photos of them? They're posted in Grandview-Woodland. Here's one of Joseph's photos. We think we've nailed the name on 'Shujaku' and decided we know two of them. We've collected a lot of hill cherries (thanks to a lot of work on Anne Eng's part), and though we may not come up with a better name for them, we know a lot of them now to see them. I think we're about to understand 'Gyoiko', and I think we're about to rename the umbrella trees I was calling 'Shidare-yoshino' to be 'Sendai-shidare'. We got a lot of help on all of that from our scout now in Japan, Mariko Izaki. We have a couple of finds that Douglas Justice is only willing so far to call "nice" or "very pretty" - Anne's tree at 57th and Fraser with small fluffy double white blossoms, and Joseph's Not-Takasago trees on 48th east of Cambie, in bloom now. Here's one of Joseph's photos of the "very pretty". So did you notice the 'Kanzan' are out? If you don't live in Vancouver, that's an in-joke. There are 11,000 'Kanzan' street trees, and another zillion or so of them planted privately and in parks. We're definitely awash in pink. The 'Shirofugen' are trying to hold back to prove Douglas right when he said the late-season trees would still be late this year. In an unusual year, all bets are off. But for a change, Bike-the-Blossoms on April 17th is going to have blossoms. Who could have guessed!
I edited my posting to add in thanks to Mariko Izaki, our cherry scout for two years who lives in Japan now. Mariko has not only shared her inspiring photos of visits to gardens there, but she's gone on field trips to get us photos of cultivars that we think might be the same as our unknown trees, and has provided translations and interpretations of Japanese-language web pages that hold the key to solving our quandries. Where would we be without you, Mariko? When I said "we" did all those things, I was thinking of you.
