Prunus × yedoensis
Prunus × yedoensis, Prunus × yedoensis 'Somei-yoshino' or Yoshino cherry is a hybrid cherry of between Prunus speciosa as father plant and Prunus pendula f. ascendens as mother. It occurs as a natural or artificial hybrid in Japan and is now one of the most popular and widely planted cultivated flowering cherries in temperate climates worldwide. It is a clone from a single tree and propagated by grafting to all over the world.
Names
Yoshino cherry is believed to be endemic to Yoshino District, Nara. In 1900, gave the Yoshino cherry the name Somei-yoshino after the famous place of cultivation, Somei village. In 1901, Yoshino cherry was given a scientific name Prunus yedoensis by Jinzō Matsumura. However, after Ernest Henry Wilson suggested Yoshino cherry is a hybrid between Prunus subhirtella var. ascendens and Prunus lannesiana in 1916, Yoshino cherry became to be called Prunus × yedoensis. As for the Korean native cherry called King cherry which was given a scientific name Prunus yedoensis var. nudiflora by a German botanist Bernhard Adalbert Emil Koehne in 1912 continues to be called Prunus yedoensis.The Yoshino cherry has no scientific cultivar name because it is the original cultivar of this hybrid species Prunus × yedoensis. A new name, 'Somei-yoshino' is proposed in accordance with other cultivars of Prunus × yedoensis.
Description
Prunus × yedoensis is a small, deciduous tree grows to be tall at maturity. It grows well in hardiness zones 5–8, and does well in full sun and moist but well drained soil. The leaves are alternately arranged, long and broad, with a serrated margin; they are often bronze-toned when newly emerged, becoming dark green by summer.The flowers emerge before the leaves in early spring; they are fragrant, in diameter, with five white or pale pink petals. The flowers grow in clusters of five or six together.
The fruit, a small cherry, is a globose drupe in diameter; they are an important source of food for many small birds and mammals, including robins and thrushes. Although the fruit contain little flesh, it contains much concentrated red juice which can stain clothing and bricks. The fruit is only marginally sweet to the human palate.
Cultivation
With its fragrant, light pink flowers, manageable size, and elegant shape, the Yoshino cherry is often used as an ornamental tree. Many cultivars have been selected; notable examples include 'Akebono', 'Ivensii', and 'Shidare Yoshino'.From the Edo period to the beginning of the Meiji period, gardeners and craftsman who made the village at Somei in Edo grew someiyoshino. They first offered them as Yoshinozakura, but in 1900, they were renamed someiyoshino by Dr. Fujino. This is sometimes rendered as 'Somei-Yoshino'.
The Yoshino cherry was introduced to Europe and North America in 1902. The National Cherry Blossom Festival is a spring celebration in Washington, D.C., commemorating the 1912 gift of Japanese cherry trees from Tokyo to the city of Washington. They are planted in the Tidal Basin park. Several of 2000 Japanese cherry trees given to the citizens of Toronto by the citizens of Tokyo in 1959 were planted in High Park.
Putative parental species
Most studies show that Yoshino cherry is a hybrid between Prunus speciosa and Prunus pendula f. ascendens.- In 1916, Ernest Henry Wilson concluded that Yoshino cherry strongly suggests a hybrid between Prunus subhirtella var. ascendens Wilson and Prunus lannesiana Wilson. It has many characters of the latter and in its venation, pubescence and shape of the cupula resembles the former
- In 1963, Takenaka assumed that Yoshino cherry is a hybrid between Prunus lannesiana var. speciose and Prunus subhirtella var. pendula form ascendens.
- In 1986, Takafumi Kaneko et al. carried out restriction endonuclease analysis on chloroplast ctDNA. Yoshino cherry showed no interplant variation of ctDNA and had the same ctDNA as P. pendula, differing from P. lannesiana by a single HindIII restriction site. This findings suggests that P. pendula is female parent of P. yedoensis.
- In 1995, Hideki Innan et al. conducted DNA fingerprinting study using different kinds of probes, M13 repeat sequence and 4 synthetic oligonucleotide and concluded that Yoshino cherry was produced only once through hybridization between Prunus lannesiana and Prunus pendula and that this particular hybrid plant has been spread vegetatively all over Japan,
- In 2014, Shuri Kato et al. conducted molecular analysis using nuclear simple sequence repeat polymorphisms to trace cultivar origins and Bayesian clustering based on the STRUCTURE analysis using SSR genotypes revealed that Yoshino cherry is a hybrid between Prunus pendula f. ascendens and Prunus lannesiana var. speciosa although there was also a small and nonsignificant association with Prunus jamasakura. The proportion of each species is Edo higan 47%, Oshima zakura 37%, and jamasakura 11%.
- In 2015, Ikuo Nakamura et al. analyzed sequences of intron 19 and exon 20 of PolA1. One of two exon 20 sequences found in Yoshino cherry was the same as that of P. pendula, whereas the other sequence was shared with several taxa in seven wild species, including P. jamasakura and P. lannesiana. Yoshino cherry contained two different haplotypes of the intron 19 sequences; one was the same as that of Oshima zakura. While another haplotype of Yoshino cherry was different from that of Edo higan by two SNPs but identical to one of two haplotypes of P. pendula ‘Komatsuotome,’ which is a cultivar of Edo higan. These results indicated that Yoshino cherry probably originated by the hybridization of cultivars derived from Edo higan and Oshima zakura.
Origin debates
- In 1908, a French missionary Taquet discovered a native cherry in Jeju islands, Korea and in 1912 a German botanist Koehne gave it a scientific name Prunus yedoensis var. nudiflora. Although this species called Eishu zakura is a variation of Yoshino cherry, from then it was misrepresented that Yoshino cherry was growing naturally in Jeju Island.
- In 1933, the Japanese botanist Gen'ichi Koizumi reported that Yoshino cherry originated on Jeju island, South Korea.
- In 1962, Yo Takenaka ruled out the possibility of Korean origin by the morphological study.
- In 1995 DNA fingerprinting technology was used to conclude that Yoshino cherry grown in many parts of Japan under the name Prunus × yedoensis is indeed clonally propagated from the same hybrid offspring of Prunus lannesiana and Prunus pendula, which confirms the 1991 conclusion given by Iwasaki Fumio that Prunus × yedoensis originated around 1720–1735 by artificial crossing of these species in Edo. Oshima zakura is an endemic species found only around Izu Islands, Izu and Bōsō Peninsulas not around Korean Peninsula.
- In 2007, a study conducted on the comparison of Japanese Yoshino cherry and Korean King cherry concluded that the trees native to these two places can be categorized as distinct species.
- In 2016, the phylogenetic analysis of nrDNA ITS data and the cpDNA haplotype network analysis suggested that independent origin between King cherry and yoshino cherry, respectively.
- In 2016, a new scientific name Cerasus × nudiflora was given to King cherry to distinguish it from Yoshino cherry.
Other cultivars
- ‘Amagi-yoshino’
- ‘America’
- ‘Candida’
- ‘Funabara-yoshino’
- ‘Hayazaki-oshima’
- ‘Izu-yoshino’
- ‘Kichijouji’
- ‘Kurama-zakura’
- ‘Mikado-yoshino’
- ‘Mishima-zakura’
- ‘Morioka-pendula’
- ‘Naniwa-zakura’
- ‘Pendula’, Shidare-ookusai-zakura
- ‘Perpendens’
- ‘Pilosa’
- ‘Sakabai’
- ‘Sakuyahime’
- ‘Sasabe-zakura’
- ‘Shouwa-zakura’
- ‘Somei-higan’
- ‘Somei-nioi’
- ‘Sotorihime’
- ‘Suruga-zakura’
- ‘Syuzenzi-zakura’
- ‘Waseyoshino’
- ‘Somei-beni’