Vancouver Park Board

"Loveliest of Trees,
the Cherry Now is Hung"

An artist draws inspiration
from the beautiful cherries at
the Stanley Park Rose Garden.

March 22, 2004 - A.E. Housman waxed poetic about them, an entire nation of Japanese celebrate beneath them and small birds line their nests with their petals. Vancouver's over 19,000 ornamental cherry trees are bursting into bloom all along city streets, boulevards and in parks heralding the start of yet another glorious spring. In all, over 49,000 of the Park Board maintained 124,000 street trees are of the flowering variety with the cherry/plum or prunus family kicking off the annual and seasonally cadenced show.

The Vancouver Park Board has been planting ornamental cherry and plum trees in a big way since the 1940s. Early interest in these most blousy of spring bloomers came through the generosity of international gifts. In 1942, 700 cherry saplings, received as a gift from the Japanese Consulate prior to WWII and then grown on at Sunset Nursery, were planted at Queen Elizabeth Park and on city boulevards. Then again in 1958, the Japanese Fruit Growers' Cooperative Association sent a shipment of 300 seedlings to Vancouver on board the SS Melkei Maru, also destined for parks and gardens. For Canada's Centennial celebrations in 1967, Vancouver's sister city, Yokohama, dispatched dozens of Prunus yedoensis trees that were promptly planted on the Cambie Street Boulevard between West 41st and 49th Avenues.

Now and over the next few weeks, a number of varieties of flowering plums and cherries will be coming into bloom all around the city. Some special places to seek out include:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

- A. E. Housman

Cambie Boulevard between West 41st and 49th Avenues Yedoensis Cherries
Cambie Boulevard betw.West 49th and Marine Drive; VanDusen Garden Shirofugen Cherries
200 & Blocks East 59th Whitcomb Cherries
Ash Street between 45th to 49th Avenues. Whitcomb Cherries
100 & 200 Blocks West 51st - 54th Avenues Passardi Plums
West 20th -23rd Avenues between Arbutus & MacDonald Streets Whitcomb Cherries
West 50th Avenue between Marine Crescent and MacDonald Street Whitcomb Cherries
4800 Block Yew; 3900-1800 Block Mathews; 600 E. 22nd ;700 E. 59th Sargentii Cherries
5400 Block Ballie;1300 Block West 57th; 6800-6900 Block Laurel Ukon Cherries
5800 Block Balsam;3400-3500 Block West 39th; 5500-5600 Block Blenheim Tai-Huku Cherries
2200 Block Charles Street & 2500 Block East 2nd Avenue Shirotae Cherries

Colour Key to Blossoms:

Passardi - pink
Sargentii - bright pink; great fall leaf colour
Shirofugen - pale pink in bud fading to pure white to light pink again
Shirotae - pure white semi-double
Tai-Huku - white - the largest of all cherry blossoms reaching over 2 inches in size
Ukon - greenish - yellow accompanied by pale bronze leaves
Whitcomb - dark pink fading to light pink
Yedoensis - shell pink and fragrant

"Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now is Hung"

Colour Key to Blossoms:

"Loveliest of Trees,
the Cherry Now is Hung"