Japanese Flowering Cherries
Wybe Kuitert
Language: English
Pages: 395
ISBN: 0881924687
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Japanese flowering cherries have inspired gardeners for more than 12 centuries. They include both the seven wild species and the hundreds of forms and cultivars known for centuries as sato-zakura, or garden cherries. This account covers their history and cultural significance, clears up long-standing confusions in taxonomy and nomenclature, and presents them in all their magnificence.
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season. Leaves fully developed are relatively small, 410 × 34 cm. Serration double, with short awns. Figure 171 'Taizan-fukun'. Photo by Arie Peterse, 29 April 1996, Tama Forest Science Garden, Tokyo. Page 336 Figure 172 'Taizan-fukun' in an old woodblock print, showing the typical branching of this garden form. From an 1891 reprint of Matsuoka (1758). Page 337 Petiole pubescent(!). Stipules divided, 79 mm, short. Corymbose inflorescence, with two to four flowers. Peduncles short, 48 mm.
the main hall of the imperial palace instead of the usual plum tree (Prunus mume), which traditionally was planted with a citrus tree (see Sandai Jitsuroku, 901, a collection of historical facts compiled by several noblemen-politicians, including Michizane Sugawara). Two centuries later this commonplace historical fact was repeatedly cited in such works as (1213) and Akikane Minamoto's (11601215) Kojidan. Wider use of the cherry came later. For example, an index of native plants is striking for
cherries as background scenery was a general principle in the design of a nobleman's garden. (For details of the design and the symbolic meaning it carried, see W. Kuitert, Themes, Scenes, and Taste, in the History of Japanese Garden Art [Amsterdam, 1988], pp. 4654.) It is also seen in the Tale of Prince Genji, a romance written around 1000 A.D. by a noblewoman. It describes the fictional garden of the prince thus: [It was] a very pleasant arrangement of lakes and hills. The hills were high in
above, and the air trembles with a snow of pink petals swerving and sliding down to the carpet of thin fallen blossoms, while darting children in scarlet and saffron and lavender crow and chatter, catching at the rosy flakes with brown fingers. The light here is pale and pearly as it filters through the sky of opal blossoms, and it transmutes the small dusky people into the semblance of butterflies and birds, now gathering into glimmering swarms of flickering color, now darting off with shrieks
easily parts from the wood. Starting too early means that the bud is not developed enough and thus is too weak to start up again on the stock. Starting too late means that the sap in the stock has slowed down again. The time for budding is limited, and it really is a technique for conscientious gardeners who are sensitive to the growing characteristics of their plants. One-year-old or two-year-old saplings planted out in the field in spring are far enough along in their growth to be used for