West End / Stanley Park

Hey, they're just starting to turn pink in these photos. They'll still look good as they're turning pink, should be worth a visit for at least another week.

 

You’re right - another week or so of pink blossoms.
But I did see a lot of red-eye and the trees don’t look as floriferous as in other years.

 

‘Ojochin’ casts a fine lateral silhouette.


The bolt seems to be working.

 

Here are the 'Shiro-fugen' at Kensington Place on May 11, nine days later. Now they're pink-flowered trees.


I'm surprised I didn't take any blossom photos there, but I made up for it. Here are the two old 'Shiro-fugen' over at English Bay, the two remaining of three replacement trees planted for the nice old one removed for some maintenance project.




These two big old 'Shiro-fugen' next to the Aquatic Centre have lots of room to spread their limbs. The same kind of tree across the street is also a nice tree, but it has trouble competing with these, which even can boast a view of snow on mountains behind them.

 

Here is a group of eight trees that are part of an apartment building's landscaping. One of the trees appears to be a replacement, but maybe it's just not as healthy as the others.

 

Well, it's a week later, and for sure, there are a lot of wilted flowers hanging on the trees. But there are also a lot of interesting-looking flowers. You just can't get one without the other.



I counted 10 'Shiro-fugen'., but there is a posting from five or so years ago mentioning a dozen trees. Then I found an 11th just past the edge of the grass area.


This tree is completely surrounded now by Prunus emarginata. I remember there used to be one tree that I noted as that species, and then one year it was gone. But its kin have come back to haunt us. There must be at least 100 young P. emarginata here, probably more.


Just to the left of this group is a group of Prunus avium. I suspect these are growing where the 12th 'Shiro-fugen' was. I saw no sign of that today, except for what I'm guessing is growth from the rootstock.


This should be a hotspot for the occurrence of Prunus x pugetensis, the hybrid of P. avium and P. emarginata, except that they don't bloom at the same time. How does that work anyway?! That last photo above shows two of the three flowers I found.

 

I'm sure people can get better photos of the 'Shiro-fugen' flower hangers-on. In our early days, Joseph Lin used to post some great photos of these idiosyncratic flowers. These are from May 25 and 31, from the Aquatic Centre, English Bay Seawall, and the Sylvia Hotel.