TREE TALK | It’s cherry blossom time

Arigato gozaimasu, Japan!

The world thanks you for the vast assortment of flowering cherries you’ve selected, hybridized, cultivated and shared with us. And here, in the Pacific Northwest, many grow even more beautifully than they do in Nippon.

Given our mild, moist winters and long, cool springs, from mid-March almost into May, various named varieties form cloud-like canopies in shades of pink, cream and sparkling white over our Madison Park sidewalks and gardens.

Then, as each plant finishes its bloom cycle, they drop their blossoms in a blizzard of petals blowing through the air and piling up in beautiful drifts that are easily swept into beds, forming a momentary carpet of color that vanishes into humus.

As a bonus, the tree — once filled with an abundance of small, somewhat leathery leaves — produces a soothing rustle in a summer wind. Many flowering cherries erupt in vivid autumn color, and the structure of the bare limbs and branches — coupled with interesting bark, which is host to mosses and lichens — enhances the winter garden. Truly, these are four-season plants.

Spectacular blooms

Give this tree rich, quick draining soil and a spot with plenty of sunlight. Once established, it will not require undue summer irrigation.
The roots are quite aggressive and often push up a bit above ground, get large and knotty and crawl across the garden a good distance from the trunk. This is considered an element of beauty in Japan, and these roots are weeded around, albeit mosses left in place. It’s yet another component adding to the sum total of the reverence toward the flowering cherry.

Pruning is helpful but not demanding. If a tent of caterpillars appears (they love this tree), cut them out before the worms hatch. A good pole pruner will come in handy. Errant branches, especially ones that cross others, should be removed.

Suckers that sprout along the trunk and limbs are easily broken off in spring with thumb and forefinger. Other than that, allow these trees to assume their natural form.

The genus and species Prunus serrulata produces the bulk of the most spectacular and commonly sold flowering cherries. Japanese gardeners have cultivated them for centuries, as they have Japanese maples.

The forms of these trees can be stiffly upright or marvelously spreading in a near-horizontal pattern. A few have weeping, pendulous, branches.
The blooms most often appear before the plant leafs out in spring.

P.s. ‘Kwanzan’ grows into a handsome, inverted cone up to 30 feet tall with large, double, deep rose-pink blooms.
P.s. ‘Shogetsu’ spreads out on mildly upright, arching limbs to a height of 15 feet and a width of 25 feet. The flowers can be semi-double or fully double and are pale pink.

The hybrid P. X yedoensis (commonly called the Yoshino cherry) has a graceful and open horizontal pattern, growing quickly to reach 40 feet in height by 30 feet wide. This is the tree that lines the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C.

The darker-pink flowering P. X y. ‘Akebono’ grows 25 feet high and equally wide. It is the most disease-free of the flowering cherries in the Pacific Northwest and also in Great Britain.

My personal favorite is P.s. ‘Mount Fuji’ (the tree pictured here). It has a powerful horizontal branching pattern reaching 20 feet in height and 25 feet in width. Its semi-double blossoms are pink in bud, opening brilliant white and then aging into a purplish-pink. The blossoms hang down in large, showy clusters.

But there are many more plants to choose from. Shop nurseries and consult garden books and plant catalogs to find the perfect fit for your garden.

A special admiration

In line with the delicacy of these gorgeous trees and the subtleties of Japanese thinking, the Japanese have a special admiration, an aesthetic sense, for the falling petals of the flowering cherry — as much, perhaps more, than the spectacular display of the blossoms at their prime. As the petals drop, it stirs in them a poignant awareness of the transience of all things.

My friend Hiro Kawasaki, a retired Evergreen State College professor, once told me a great story about the Kabuki theater. Back in the mid-18th century, the Edo Period, the plays were a bit more rowdy than they are today. At a moment of high tension in the action, an actor would shout “Shibaraku!” Literally translated, it meant, “Wait a minute.” This bombastic utterance literally stopped the show, and then some great truth was revealed and the moment was sustained for the audience.

There are days in spring when I walk through Madison Park looking at our magnificent flowering cherries in their unearthly beauty, knowing that, all-too-soon, these incredible blossoms will start falling in a spring breeze and this dramatic moment in the show will pass.
I have the urge to shout, “Shibaraku!” But that, of course, is futile. Time and nature march on.

So I’m left with the hope that I’ll see yet another spring with its flowering cherries.

STEVE LORTON, a Madison Park resident, is former Northwest Bureau chief for Sunset Magazine. To comment on this column, write to MPTimes@nwlink.com.