Cerasus serrulata Seeds | Japanese Flowering Cherry
LATIN NAME: Cerasus serrulata
COMMON NAME: Japanese Flowering Cherry
Plant Profile
The Japanese flowering cherry is a small to medium tree, eight to twelve metres tall, with a broad crown and smooth, horizontally banded bark. The wild species has single white or pale pink flowers in April, but the trees planted in parks are almost all cultivars with double flowers in shades from white to deep pink.
It is native to Japan, Korea and China, and it has been selected for centuries. The most planted cultivar in the world, Kanzan, has thirty petals in each flower and is completely sterile, which is why every Kanzan is a graft. The tree is shallow-rooted, and old specimens often hollow at the base while still flowering heavily.
Science & Biotechnology
Sterility is the key to the cultivated cherry. Kanzan and several other doubles set no fruit, so the tree puts nothing into seed and flowers heavily every year, which is exactly what a park planting wants. The cost is that the cultivar can only be propagated by grafting or cuttings.
The flowering date is driven by accumulated warmth, and long records of cherry flowering in Kyoto and Tokyo now serve as one of the longest phenological series available, going back more than a thousand years. Recent years show the date arriving earlier, which is one of the clearest biological signals of a warming climate. Bark and leaf also contain coumarins and flavonoids, and the pickled leaf used in sweets is eaten more for the aroma than for any nutritional value.
Uses & Benefits
The tree is grown for ornament, and cherry blossom viewing is a civic event across Japan and in many Chinese cities. The wood is hard and dark and is used for small furniture and for printing blocks, though the tree is rarely cut for timber.
Blossom, leaf and bark appear in Japanese medicine, and salted cherry blossom is used to flavour tea and sweets. The leaves are pickled in spring and used to wrap rice cakes, a use that requires them to be gathered before they toughen. The wood is also used for knife handles and for small carved objects, since it takes detail well.
Growing from Seed
Seed needs warm then cold stratification: three months at 20°C, then three at 2 to 5°C, with germination in the second spring. Seedlings are variable, so named trees are grafted in late winter onto a seedling rootstock.
The tree wants sun, deep soil and good drainage, and it is intolerant of compacted ground and of being planted too deep. It is short-lived by tree standards, twenty to forty years, and it declines quickly after root damage. Prune only in summer, since winter wounds invite silver leaf and bacterial canker. Water young trees in dry springs, since a drought in the first three years is the commonest cause of failure.
Our Take
The definitive spring tree, sterile by design and short-lived by nature, best planted small and left alone in good soil.
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