Wednesday 30 March 2011

Cherry Blossom

At this time of year, gardens throughout Britain are bursting into life. The most obvious sign of Spring for many people is the proliferation of blossoms on the cherry trees. At other times of year the cherry trees may go unnoticed, but in late March and early April they dominate the landscape.

In my own garden though, March sees the LAST of my cherry blossom. This is because my solitary cherry tree is an Autumn-flowering one - Prunus Autumnalis "Surbhitella". It never produces a really spectacular display like some of the Spring-flowering types, but it has a long season: the first flowers normally appear in late November. Also (crucially) the flowers are very tenacious, and will resist all but the very worst Winter weather.

This is a photo of one of the blossoms, taken on March 28th.


In my usual way, I also offer you a close-up view of the same flower:


The flowers may be on their last legs, but they are being replaced by a mass of delicate foliage:


There is also one bit of bad news to relate: every year, the fresh new leaves are comprehensively chomped by some voracious bugs. Masses of circular holes appear in the leaves, which then fall off the tree. I don't know what sort of bug does this, and even if I did it would probably be beyond my capability to spray the tall straggly tree against it. In the end, after the insect life-cycle has run its course nourished by those juicy leaves, the tree produces a second crop of leaves (though I suspect it is never as luxuriant as the first crop would have been!). Isn't Nature marvellous?

7 comments:

  1. Je viens de découvrir votre photo " FROZEN RAINWATER ON BROCCOLI ", elle est magnifique.
    J'en ai une qui lui ressemble ; vous pourriez la voir ici :

    http://jardiner.over-blog.fr/photo-1007317-94-Perle-d-Eau-sur-une-Feuille-de-Pois-Vivace_jpg.html
    _______________________________
    I have just discovered your photo " FROZEN RAINWATER ON BROCCOLI ", it is magnificent.
    I have one photo which looks like yours; you could see it here:

    http://jardiner.over-blog.fr/photo-1007317-94-Perle-d-Eau-sur-une-Feuille-de-Pois-Vivace_jpg.html
    _______________________
    (My english isn't good)

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  2. Funny thing my cherry tree has not been in blossom yet but I agree about the leaves I think we have the same bug here.

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  3. Bonsoir Kimo; Merci de votre visite, et pour registrer votre commentaire. I have looked at your picture, which is equally good and very similar - though my "perle" is frozen and yours is not. You have some fantastic pictures on your blog - I must explore it more fully. Your English may not be very good, but one thing is for sure - my French is even worse!

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  4. Yes, nature is marvelous, she gives she takes, a simple philosophy! Lovely photos, enjoyed the closeup!

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  5. Mabye the beetle the RHS has as the number one garden pest now??

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  6. Hi Mark, here I am catching up with you from your comment this morning. Your photo's are brilliant, I love them. You asked where we went yesterday ! we visited the National Trust property - Hinton Ampner ( we are NT members)have you been there ? it's fantastic and they have a walled veg garden, nothing much growing at the moment of course. I took lots of photo's and will do a post with them soon.

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  7. Hi, I have a case of envy here. I wish I could grow them where I live. I will have to be content seeing them on the blogs I follow.

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