Japanese Flowering Cherries by Wybe Kuitert (free)

Page 271

Page 263

Miyoshi (1916) described one "tiger's tail" under the name Prunus serrulata f. caudata. This 'Tora-no-o' formed a small tree with ascending branches. The flowers were single, white or light pink, and were set in corymbs with three or four together. The word caudata ("tailed") referred to the way of presenting the blossom. A description with photo in Kayama's 1933 survey of the cherries in the Hirano Shrine in gives peduncles of 1 cm and pedicels of 5 mm. The photo shows that the foliage is later than the blossom. Another illustration with description is found in Ohwi and Ohta (1973). The inflorescences have short stalks and are set together rather tightly at the end of spurs that crowd only at the end of the branches. Miyoshi's 'Tora-no-o' is rarely seen in Japan. 'Beni-tora-no-o' was a pink "tiger's tail" sold to Western countries in a Japanese catalog of 1937 as 'Beni-toranowo'. Again, the flowers were described as "crowded at the tips of shoots" (Wada 1937). This cherry is found in a rare collection in Japan and is not extinct as Kawasaki (1994) believed. It is a dark pink version of Miyoshi's 'Tora-no-o'. 'Yaebeni-tora-no-o' is still in cultivation but has proved to be a form very close to, if not the same as, 'Edo-zakura'. 'Ichihara-tora-no-o' is quite spectacular and differs markedly from 'Beni-tora-no-o', 'Torano-o', or 'Yae-beni-tora-no-o'. It has double flowers in compact corymbs that, mixed with the foliage, completely cover the branches. Corymbs and foliage appear on spurs that are several years old, showing the marks of bud scales of previous years as rings on the twig. The spurs are regularly set on the upperside of the wide-reaching branches that barely ramify. White fluffs of blossom appear thus in a regular rhythm, alternating with the fresh green young foliage over the upperside of long branches. With a little imagination, one can see a perfect bigger-than-life-size tiger's tail of cherry blossom in it. A 'Tora-no-o' with the same alternating colors is described in a 1713 book of humor called Kokkei-zodan *. 'Ichihara-tora-no-o' is quite spectacular compared to Miyoshi's 'Tora-no-o'. It is no surprise to find a detailed reference in a non-botanic source. The herbalist Matsuoka (1785) presented a 'Tora-no-o' with illustration in his cherry book, , that fits well with 'Ichihara-tora-no-o' and has no relation to Miyoshi's 'Tora-noo'. Therefore, it is tempting to let the written history of 'Ichihara-tora-no-o' begin with these eighteenth-century records. Without reference to any older history though, this cherry was "discov-


Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.