Much Ado About Everything

I was out and about on Saturday and Sunday, enjoying the best day this year so far (22 degrees!) in Vancouver and the various cherry blossoms. There are several sources of information about cherries in Vancouver, one is the official Vancouver Cherry Blossom festival and here is another  link to species of cherries in Vancouver. From my observation this weekend, you can see the following cherries right now:

Yoshino cherries – all over town.  This huge one is from VanDusen botanical garden. 

The next one is from a residential street between the garden and the Queen Elizabeth park.  You can see the closeup of flowers.

The last one is near my building.

Weeping Higan Cherries  – in VanDusen botanical garden, should be in full bloom around now (on Saturday they looked like they were a few days short of fully blooming.

Shirotae (Mount Fuji) cherries – the ones with white double flowers. They are currently blooming at Granville and Georgia, in front of Sears. They are beautiful! Their leaves come at the same time as flowers which makes the combination look even better – green and white. And actually there are three or four of these right in front of my building, just starting to bloom!  If you look carefully at that picture of Yoshinos, you can see a tree with some green leaves, not yet in bloom – that is the same Shirotae, and today they have begun to bloom.

Takasago cherries – I probably saw them too but didn’t distinguish them from Yoshinos. These should also be in bloom around now and should be frequent in Vancouver.

Taihaku cherries – supposedly very rare in Vancouver. Judging by the picture on the website,they should be blooming now and the one tree that should be easily accessible is one close to the Burrard bridge, on the south side. I’d like to take a look.

Sargent cherries – there are some in full bloom on East 43rd Avenue, between Inverness and Knight streets.  I have not seen those. I did see a single Sargent cherry in the VanDusen garden, also in bloom right now but that one is much more white than these and is presumably not common in this region.

Umineko cherries – near the Queen Elizabeth Park’s duck pond. These were in full bloom over the weekend and are also white-greenish. While they look similar, they aren`t the same as ones on Georgia street.  The major distinction is that Umineko has single flowers while Shirotae has double flowers.