A row of Prunus ‘Snow Goose’ creates the southern border of Ceperley Meadow in Stanley Park.
They reach prebloom in early April; perhaps they get their cultivar (cultivated variety) name from the way they look in prebloom, when they lift their beaky buds up to the sky.
Today, April 18, 2021, these flowering cherry blossoms have been in bloom for over a week.
It’s early morning when I set off, before most people are outdoors, though there are plenty of cyclists, joggers, and dog walkers about. Also, there are a few individuals, like me, who stop at every interesting tree that’s leafing out and every bud that’s bursting with beauty. There’s much to see as I walk beside the Ted and Mary Greig Rhododendron Garden west of Lost Lagoon—catkins on weeping willows, large pink petals on and below magnolia trees, prickly new leaves on Gunnera plants, and rhododendrons of every hue and heft.
I turn west onto the path between Ceperley Meadow on my right and the Pitch & Putt on my left and there, ahead of me, are the small trees I came to see, blossoming abundantly in one straight line: the Dutch hybrid, Prunus ‘Snow Goose’.[i]
.
These are young trees and so they’re not tall yet. They have the potential to grow to between 2.5 m and 3.5 m in height (8 ft.‑12 ft.) after ten years, so they are ideal as front- or backyard trees.[ii] These individuals are blossoming at shoulder height, which allows me to get right up close.
Over the years, the location for the graft on a flowering cherry tree has moved up and down the trunk, from a shoulder-height graft to near the ground and back. The rootstock is usually Prunus avium, the mazzard cherry, also known as sweet cherry or wild cherry. The scion (pronounced ˈsī-ən, as in the beginning of the word science) that is grafted onto the rootstock can be any village cherry tree that is valued for its charm and beauty—a cultivar of Prunus serrulata, P. incisa, P. sargentii, P. speciosa, and other P. species. Ultimately, the cultivar name of a cherry tree becomes easier to remember than its species name because many flowering cherry trees are hybrids of hybrids. ‘Snow Goose’, for instance, has a complex heritage. Douglas Justice, Vancouver’s ornamental cherry tree expert, says ‘Snow Goose’ is a modern (1970) Dutch hybrid of Fuji cherry (Prunus incisa) and Japanese hill cherry (P. serrulata var. spontanea), the same parents as in the 1928 English hybrid ‘Umineko’.[iii]
A graft on a tree creates health problems in later life (fungal and bacterial), as many Vancouver cherry trees can attest to, evidenced by their knobby, gnarled trunks. And so, with the gains being made through tissue culture—micropropagation—many flowering cherry cultivars are now growing on their own rootstock, avoiding all health problems associated with a tree graft.
These ‘Snow Goose’ cherry trees are growing up as straight as an arrow with seemingly no grafts. Perhaps they have been grown through tissue culture, which, because of the ability to grow hundreds of trees all at once from very small amounts of material, allows slow growing cultivars to grow from their own roots.
The tree habit, its growth shape, is like the distal end of an arrow, with many branches reaching up for the sky, rather than branching out horizontally, which is typical of so many other cherry trees.
Each bud opens to the sun with a corymb of two or three yellow-centred, white-petalled flowers on long peduncles. The flowers are gorgeous, single blossoms from 2.5 cm to 3 cm wide, with five to eight pure white petals, each petal having a tiny apical notch. As the blossom reaches full bloom, the yellow centre turns magenta to attract insects for pollination. The flower is perfect—having both male and female parts in one bloom—in this case, one yellow pistil surrounded by twenty or more yellow, pollen-tipped stamens. As the flower moves into post-peak bloom, the magenta centre turns yellow once more.
Bright green leaves have already emerged. They linger back, almost hidden by the profusion of white blossoms. The leaf margins are serrulated; their small teeth come from their P. serrulata parent.
As I stare closely at these flowers, I hear a bumblebee buzzing nearby.
She’s browsing for pollen, her wings moving her so quickly from one flower to the next that I am not sure I can capture her image with my camera.
And again. Bottoms up!
Many flowering cherry trees have a cauliflorous habit, meaning sprays of flowers can grow directly off their trunks.[iv]
.
And like the trunk of every other cherry tree, these ‘Snow Goose’ tree trunks have many, clearly visible, horizontal lines of corky lenticels for gas exchange.
Unlike P. avium, the cherry species that bears edible fruit, P. ‘Snow Goose’ is typical of a flowering cherry tree in that it is fruitless, sterile, ornamental. And beauteous.
Flowering cherry trees have a huge fan club in Vancouver—just take a look at all the events on the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival’s website to confirm that fact.[v]
Searching on the City of Vancouver’s Open Data Portal under “Street Trees,” I learn that thirty-three P. ‘Snow Goose’ trees have been planted along Vancouver’s boulevards, most of them planted in the winter of 2009‑2010.[vi] Perhaps you have a ‘Snow Goose’ growing near you. Take a look. Don’t wait too long because this tree’s short blossom season is almost over. Then you will have to wait until autumn before you see these deciduous leaves turning a vivid reddish orange before falling to the earth below.
[i] Nina Shoroplova, Legacy of Trees: Purposeful Wandering in Vancouver’s Stanley Park (Victoria: Heritage House, 2020), p. 149.
[iii] Douglas Justice, Ornamental Cherries in Vancouver (Vancouver: UBC Botanical Garden and the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, 2014), pp. 98‑99. Also, see Douglas Justice, Steven Clarke, Karin England, and Daniel Mosquin, Vancouver Trees app.
[iv] Susan K. Pell and Bobbi Angell, A Botanist’s Vocabulary: 1300 Terms Explained and Illustrated (Portland, Oregon: Timber Press, 2016), p. 47.
