Identification: Umineko (?) – upright shape, small single whites, green roundish leaves, mid-season

[wcutler]

NOT. These are not cherries at all. See the responses below, in which you can see photos of real Uminekos. Discussion has now turned into Avium understock sprouts.

The posting was:
The Uminekos in the west end of Vancouver are quite small and very upright, so they don’t say “cherry” the way most of the other cultivars do. They have small single white blossoms set among the fully opened roundish green leaves. The centres seem to give a red impression, except in one of my photos, and the bark seems to have less prominent horizontal stripes and even more of a vertical effect (which is what gives me niggling doubts). These photos are from March 29 and April 7, 2007.

[pierrot]

could it be a pear or crab apple rather than a cherry?

the petals do not overlap. I was told that cherries are distinguishable by the fact that in their blossoms the petals overlapp while in the maloideae the petals are separated by sepals giving the appearance of non overlapping

[Douglas Justice]

Bingo, Pierrot. Pyrus calleryana, I think.

'Umineko' is rarely encountered (and even more rarely identified). The attached images were taken about 20 years ago of a tree on East 59th Avenue at Quebec Street in Vancouver. I have to say that my photography has improved with the advent of digital photography. I worked in the wholesale nursery trade (at Massot Nurseries) in the '80s, a great time for ornamental cherries. We sold a huge list of modern cultivars, including Prunus 'Umineko', 'Accolade', 'Okame', 'Rancho' and 'Spire', as well as less commonly available species such as P. verecunda (= P.serrulata var. pubescens), the Korean hill cherry. Two cultivars that were also available at the time, 'Pandora' and 'Shosar', have disappeared without a trace, although 'Shosar' (the less attractive of the two) is still in the UBC cherry orchard. There used to be a huge Korean hill cherry in Richmond under the Oak Street bridge. Sadly, road widening took that one out. I've been searching for others. I'd certainly be interested to know if anyone knows of surviving specimens.

[wcutler]

So here's a tree, that I'd given up on figuring out. Could it be Umineko? It's the first photo below, taken on April 1, 2007. My comment in my notes is that it's much taller than it is wide. But then, there's a tree next to it that has blossoms (third photo) that look like Shirotae, but it also is much taller than it is wide, so I just thought that the three trees jammed in together made them all deformed. In the second photo, taken on March 27, the tree in the middle has the double blossoms, the one on the right has the single blossoms (and the one on the left seemed different again). Could Shirotae look like that?

[Ron B]

In the left photo it can be seen that there are pinkish flowers with dark centers of one kind of cherry with the white flowers and erect, open branches of sweet cherry right next to it - almost certainly a Japanese cherry with sweet cherry rootstock sprouts that need to be removed.

In the middle picture the habit shot of the pink one does look like the tree (said to be 'Umineko') shown in the previous post, as do the pinkish flowers in the left picture. And the flower picture on the right does appear to show 'Shirotae'. There is also one of these on a Seattle street with a high crown, however it consists of a tall dome made up of upright trunks with spreading branches in the upper part rather than the upright branches all the way to the top of a sweet cherry. Maybe part of the 'Shirotae' is sweet cherry rootstock sprouts and you didn't notice that the white flowers on these weren't double etc. If the whole thing has 'Shirotae' flowers and part of it has vertical stems, including side branches all the way to the top that is unusual.

[Douglas Justice]

I think Ron has it right, but I've seen plenty of 'Shirotae' with uncharacteristically upright branching. I'm sure that nurseries repeatedly remove horizontal branches to "train" the trees into forming a bushy head, and make the trees conform to their overly tight row spacing. I sometimes have a quite visceral reaction to this kind of pruning.

I remember being on a roadtrip in the Okanagan Valley with my family when I was about 7 years old. We were passing through some residential area when my father screeched the car to a halt and started berrating, at the top of his ample voice, some schmuck who was peforming a hideous butchery on a defenseless tree. It was all my mother could do to prevent him from climbing out of the car, to, presumably, stop the guy from continuing with his brainless attack.

I have a similar, if somewhat more reflective and non-violent, reaction to pruning inaction, like when people don't prune out the sprouts of understock before it becomes established. If allowed to become established, understock sprouts will form vascular connections that are much more robust that those of scions (the scions are connected to a tortuous vasculature that passes through a graft union). It only takes a year or two for the scion to become weakened, the understock to overtake the scion and the pruning cut to remove the understock, too large.

We (the Botanical Garden) recently purchased thirteen 'Tai Haku', which we have planted 25 feet apart in a row parallel to the road in front of the Garden entrance. Every few months I walk the row and rub out any sprouts that arise below the graft union. Good insurance for long-lived, beautiful trees.

[Ron B]

Jacobson seems to have become convinced that Japanese cherries on mazzard (sweet cherry) are generally doomed to fail.

http://www.arthurleej.com/a-overplanted.html

[wcutler]

Maybe you've all seen lots of these failures, but I'm just noticing them for the first time, and I particularly like this spire/avium combo in a gas station planting in the west end in Vancouver. Photo taken April 10, 2007.

[Ron B]

Disease problems with 'Spire' evident in this shot. Another that may be quite a stinker under local conditions is 'Okame'. A blighted commercial planting across from my GP's office looks like it is full of dead bugs in cobwebs. (Then there's the harsh combination of metallic red sepals with pink petals). 'Autumnalis Rosea' seems to have gotten worse in recent years.

[wcutler]

Maybe someone wants to learn something about Umineko in this thread! The tree pictured in this posting above is just starting to bloom on April 1, 2008. The early blossoms look so different from the later ones when they're red in the centre.

[wcutler]

Here's a comparison of newer and older blossoms. They have big "stars" from the front like Somei-yoshino, and I would not be able to distinguish them from that except for the upright shape of the tree.

[Douglas Justice]

The 'Umineko' are really showing their stuff this year. Here are a couple of pictures I took today. Image on the left: East 57th just east of Ontario; image on the right: Ontario Street south of 30th Ave, on west side of Percy Norman Pool.

[wcutler]

Umineko leaves, or I hope that's what they are. These are from the tree identified as Umineko in posting #4 in this thread. They look quite a bit like the ones in the Yama-zakura or whatever thread, but these leaves emerge green.

[wcutler]

I'm starting to get it now with those double-serrated leaf edges - they're from the incisa part of the P. incisa x P. speciosa 'Umineko' parentage, and that's why we now think those trees in the Yama-zakura link in the previous posting are a P. incisa hybrid and not Yama-zakura.

[wcutler]

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