THE great massed flowering of the spring cherry trees is just approaching its crescendo and clouds of petals fall like snow to the ground.

In Japan, where the big flowering cherries originated, there are ceremonies to mark the opening of the blossom time. In April and early May, the great flowering cherries can transform the garden with their exuberance.

The flowering cherries have been grown in Europe for only a couple of hundred years, having been bred in Japan and grown there for centuries previously. They were very popular about 50 years ago as street trees, and they certainly made a spectacular show, but they have been removed in many towns because their powerful surface roots tend to heave pavements and crack them, creating a hazard to the public.

The flowering cherries are too big for small modern gardens. But despite this loss of status, the big cherries arestill very popular, widely planted and, on a sunny day with a blue sky behind, it is hard to deny that they are spectacular.

The showiest forms are double-flowered, which usually means that the fertile parts of the flowers are converted to petals with the result that the trees set no fruit.

In turn, this means that the tree loses no energy making seeds and fruits each summer and directs all its efforts towards laying down buds for a mad rush of flowers each spring.

Many of the great cherries retain their Japanese names. The best-known and most widely planted, and probably a little overdone, is ‘Kanzan’ or ‘Kwanzan’, a powerful grower, over 10 metres tall and wide with branches that strike upwards as a young tree and then become more arching or level-topped. The masses of pink flowers often have a purplish tinge that makes the effect stronger.

‘Tai haku’ is also known as the ‘great white cherry’, because of its large size with pure white single flowers. ‘Shirofugen’ is a big tree, broad and spreading, with masses of white flowers, double and large, that turn to soft pink before they fall. This is not as big as the others mentioned, usually less than eight metres and somewhat wider.

‘Shogetsu’ is smaller and more easily accommodated, a real beauty to about five metres, and it is remarkable for its drooping flowers, held on long stems, pink and white fading as they age. ‘Hizakura’ is another relatively small kind reaching about six metres, with spreading habit, flowers semi-double deep rose pink, very beautiful.

‘Shirotae’, also known as ‘Mount Fuji’, is a superb variety with pendent white flowers along horizontal branches, scented, and often single on young plants, becoming semi-double on older specimens, and about six metres tall and wide. Watch out for these and other varieties these days. If you think you might like to plant one, it is a good time to do so because they will be in flower and you can pick your favourite. They can be planted in full flower from pots.

source : www.independent.ie