How much in detail do you know about cherry blossoms?
Speaking of cherry blossoms’ taste, cherry rice cake, cherry blossoms, cherry ice cream are representative.
Cherry rice cake has two types such as Kanto style Cho-mei-ji and Kansai style Do-myo-ji, which appearance and texture, taste differ greatly.
The leaves of Ooshima-zakura are used for including cherry rice cake.
On the other hand, the flower of “Kanzan” is used for decoration placed on red bean bread.
And double flowering petals such as “Fugenzou” and “Ichiyou” are used for floating on tea at the time of celebration.
Both have a refreshing and distinctive flavor.
I heard that the caterpillar monokuro-shachihoko which eats the cherry blossoms often has a slight taste of cherry blossoms.
Distinguishing the type of cherry blossoms is the swelling of the base of the petal called hypanthium.
One of Edo-higan swells roundly like a vase shape.
One of Ooshima-zakura swells an elongated fishing bel shape.
“Somei-yoshino” has an intermediate form of these.
In addition, “Somei-yoshino” is known to be a hybrid of Edo-higan and Ooshima-zakura from the analysis of DNA.
To check the shape of hypanthium is hint to identify the variety of cherry blossoms.
When you see a cherry tree of a kind unknown, we recommend that you pay attention to the backside of the flower.
When you sow the cherry blossoms’ seed, what kind of flowers will it bloom?
We don't know before flower blooming.
Because cherry blossoms are easy to make hybrid.
Even if I sow the seeds of “Somei-yoshino”, it will not be “Somei-yoshino”.
So, how do the species make seedlings?
Major method is branch grafting.
Grafting is a traditional cloning technique that plants branches of flowers you want in the other tree’s root.
Cultivar plant cannot be preserved with condition of seeds.
For that reason, it is important to preserve gene of cultivar plant as a plant not as a seed.