Tea Under the Cherry Blossoms

I love my neighbors. . . .

In the Window of the Library, Cherry Blossoms

First Cherry Blossoms

I have signed up to be a cherry blossom scout for the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival and here's the object of my first posting: a small Whitcomb in bloom at 26th and Main. Last night I went to a talk by Douglas Justice on the subject of blossom biology. He fell in love with ornamental cherry trees on his early morning paper routes as a teenager. He loves the poetry of ornamental cherry blossoms and used to take his friends walking around the city at night on tree-spotting expeditions. Justice brought some branches he had forced to show us some examples of the blossoms so we could literally pick them apart.

Apparently there are about 1700 ornamental cherry trees in Vancouver. To learn how to identify them, Justice recommended a book called Japanese Flowering Cherries by Wybe Kuitert, or you can buy Justice's book called Ornamental Cherries in Vancouver. There are some good basic things to learn, like how to tell the difference between a cherry tree and a plum. (Hint: look closely at the petals.) Apples and plums have claw-shaped blossoms, becoming very narrow where they attach to the calyx. Cherry tree bark is also very distinctive on many of the trees (as you can see on the post I did below on the Weeping Higgans).

Here are some excerpts from my notes:

Akebonos often have a noticeable extra petal or half petal in one in ten blossoms. Shiroto blossoms have a faint almond fragrance. Taki-nioi (Fragrant Waterfall) have an even stronger almond fragrance, and you can see one of these rare trees in the Nitobe Garden at UBC. Umineko (Seagull) has curved white petals, and you can see an example in Queen Elizabeth Park. The Rancho trees have a very upright shape and the new leaves and buds are very sticky. Ama-no-gawa (Heaven's River) has flowers that stick straight up from the branches. Takasago's blossoms hang in balls like fluffy white baseballs. Mikuruma-gaeshi (The Royal Carriage Returns) has double and single blossoms; an apparent contradiction which was the cause of a long ago royal argument.

Ukon (Turmeric) cherry trees have a yellow tinge and can be seen on the south side of the Oakridge shopping centre. Shogetsu (Moonlight through Pine Trees) are very old, venerated trees. The Shiro fugen are the last to blossom in Vancouver and can hold their blossoms for up to one month. All these cherries are grafted on to sweet cherry stock, which is often problematic, causing many of these trees to be diseased. The UBC Botanical Garden is going to try a new program growing cherry varieties on their own stock. It will take longer, but the gardeners hope to create more resistant cherry trees this way.

What's Blooming at the Cherry Blossom Festival?

Well, the cherry trees aren't blooming in Van Dusen Gardens, but I took photos of this Weeping Higgan anyway.


I went and visited the honeybees who were taking short, cautious flights, and exploring the world directly around them.





I found one tulip is bloom, some white forsythia, some earlier rhododendrons and this Japanese witchhazel.

Cherry Blossom Festival: Haiku

On Sunday the sun came out, making it an ideal day to go to the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival at Van Dusen Gardens. At the entrance was this tunnel made of chicken wire filled with shredded paper. People wrote wishes and haiku on the ribbons.



This installation was inside the entrance to the gardens. You could write your haiku on the paper circles and hang it vertically.

Some people chose to have picnics outside the gardens, but once you entered the path with the cherry trees, there was another haiku installation piece called Trunk Space.



People wrote haiku and clipped them onto strings. When I was visiting the installation one little girl explored the wonderful echo inside by barking like a dog into the tubes.




This is the view up through the tubes.


This is one of my favorite entries to the haiku contest this year. It's the best reason for being late to school I can think of! Look for the haiku entries on the buses this spring.