When Do Cherry Blossoms Bloom? A Complete Guide to the Latest Blooming Times
Cherry blossom is the collective name for several plants in the genus Cerasus of the Rosaceae family. It is native to the temperate Himalayan region of the Northern Hemisphere, grows throughout the world, and mainly grows in Japan. Each branch bears 3 to 5 flowers in umbel-shaped inflorescences, the petal tips are notched, and the flower colors are mostly white and pink. Let us take a look below at when cherry blossoms bloom!
When Do Cherry Blossoms Bloom?
Cherry blossoms usually bloom in April, with umbel-shaped racemose inflorescences, and bear fruit in May. The drupe is nearly spherical, and the blooming period is very short, usually four to ten days. Their beauty lies in the fervor of full bloom, and even more in the noble, pure and resolute grandeur of the scene when they fall in profusion after blooming. Cherry blossom colors include red, pink, vermilion, bright red, white, and pale pink. Korean cherry blossoms are mostly white, Japanese cherry blossoms are mostly colorful, and Chinese cherry blossoms are mostly pink.
What Is the Flower Language of Cherry Blossoms?
Cherry blossom is a symbol of love and hope, representing elegant, simple and pure love. Cherry blossoms are like an innocent young girl, quietly blooming in spring. The white and pink cherry blossoms all over the tree are the most beautiful words to tell a lover of love. Someone in your heart is like that lonely shower of cherry blossoms, slowly disappearing into the depths of time, leaving behind eternal memories.
Common Varieties of Cherry Blossoms
1. Tokyo Cherry (Prunus x yedoensis): The bark of the Tokyo cherry is purplish brown, smooth and glossy, with horizontal stripes. Flowers and leaves are alternate; the leaves are elliptical or obovate-elliptical, with awn-like teeth along the edges, pointed tips with glands, dark green and glossy on the surface, and slightly lighter on the back. The stipules are lanceolate-linear, with finely cleft serrated edges and glands at the cleft ends. Each branch bears three to five flowers in umbel-shaped clusters; the sepals spread horizontally, and the petal tips are notched, white, red, or pink. The flowers open together with the leaves in March or after the leaves.
2. Somei Yoshino Cherry: Somei Yoshino cherry is a horticultural variety of cherry blossom and a deciduous tree about 5 to 12 m tall. The flowers have five petals; the color is pale red when the flower first opens and gradually turns white when fully open. Because it is artificially bred, it cannot set fruit and reproduce naturally, and can only be propagated by cuttings. It has the same petal shape and color as the Yoshino cherry, and the same blooming period, so they can bloom and fade at the same time. In Japan's Kanto region, the blooming period is about late March to early April.
3. Taiwan Cherry (Prunus campanulata): Taiwan cherry is also called Fei Ying, bell-flowered cherry, Fujian mountain cherry, etc. As the name implies, it is a red cherry blossom that blooms in the cold early spring. Taiwan cherry may indeed be considered the earliest cherry blossom to open in mainland China in a year, usually blooming in mid-February. Both its Chinese name and Latin scientific name can explain this, and its inflorescences look like strings of long bells.
4. Mountain Cherry (Prunus serrulata): Mountain cherry is the most widely introduced cherry blossom in China. With its diverse varieties and colors and relatively long blooming period, it has won favor in Japan and around the world. The original variety of mountain cherry is single-petaled. Wild plants are found from Jiangnan to Northeast China on the Chinese mainland, extending to the Korean Peninsula and Japan, but as a garden planting it is less common than its variety, the Japanese late cherry. Japanese late cherry has many horticultural varieties, with colors ranging from pure white, pale pink, deep pink to pale yellow and light green. The newly grown young leaves also have their own forms, from yellow-green, red-brown to purple-red, and the petals range from single, semi-double to double. The emergence of each late cherry variety is the result of careful breeding.
5. Weeping Cherry (Prunus subhirtella var. pendula): Weeping cherry is a variety, also called weeping large-leaf early cherry or large-leaf early cherry. Most cherry blossoms introduced to China have branches that grow upward or spread out. The weeping large-leaf early cherry is like most cherry blossoms in the early stage of growth, but after reaching a certain height, the large branches grow horizontally and the small branches are upright or drooping, forming weeping willow-like cherry branches, similar in shape to the dragon-claw pagoda tree. The flowers of the weeping large-leaf early cherry are pale red tending to white, with a compact flower shape. Together with the sense of quiet elegance brought by its weeping habit, it is often praised by Japanese people as the most beautiful cherry blossom.
6. Yunnan Cherry: Yunnan early cherry is also called red-flowered high-pot cherry. It blooms before the leaves, with deep red flowers, about 25 petals, a flower diameter of about 2.5 cm, half-open and drooping flowers, and red sepals. The young leaves are tea-brown, and the blooming period is from late February to early March. This type of cherry is native to Yunnan, and is also distributed in Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar. It was first widely cultivated in Kunming, Yunnan, and since the 1980s has been promoted to major cherry planting areas across the country. The flowers of red-flowered high-pot cherry are mostly semi-double, with colors from deep pink to red, dense like clouds, blooming in early spring at the end of February, almost in the same blooming period as Taiwan cherry.
7. Edohigan: Edohigan can grow into a large tree about 15 to 25 m tall. Somei Yoshino was created by crossing “Edohigan” and “Oshima Cherry”. Many representative ancient trees in Japan are Edohigan. The shape of the calyx tube is very distinctive, with the lower part swollen into a pot shape. It blooms relatively early, and got this name because it blooms during the spring equinox period. The petals are about 1 cm long, and the colors include pure white and red-purple, but pale red is more common. This cherry tree is very robust and long-lived, and many are large trees 15 to 20 m tall. The blooming period is late March (Tokyo), mid-April (Sendai, Kanazawa), and late April to early May (Morioka).