you state they are sterile ...

but you talk about SEED-lings

you can NOT get seed.. from sterile trees ... to grow seedlings ...

most trees can NOT be rooted ... and are therefore.. grafted ...

as such.. most root suckers.. are not the preferred tree above ...

you need to research some general tree information .... as most of what you need to know .. is not specific to cherry trees ...

there is a tree forum .. and maybe some of those peeps have some links to such general info ... and there is always google ... try to avoid the scholarly stuff.. and look for basic stuff.. that strikes your muse ...

as to whether or not ... flowering cherry will pollinate fruit cherry ... try the fruit forum ...

both of those forums are rather active.... if this one fails you ...

good luck

ken

Here are just a few of the different varieties of Japanese Cherry blossom trees:

Akebono (it is another cultivar of Prunus yedoensis)

Shirofugen

Edozakura

Ukon (it is another cultivar of Prunus serrulata)

Amanogawa

Yamazakura

Usuzumizakura

Ezo-yama-zakura (variety in northern japan can tolerate extreme cold, it is a cultivar of Prunus sargentii)

Choji-zakura

Amayadori

Higan-zakura (Prunus subhirtella)

Hosokawa nioi

Ichiyo

Shirotae

Jo nioi (has sweet almond scent)

Washi no o (it is another cultivar of Prunus yedoensis)

Yokihi

This post was edited by Socal2warm on Sun, Jan 11, 15 at 0:20

I've never heard of Japanese cherries and sweet cherries (Prunus avium cultivars such as 'Bing') being cross-compatible. If that is true it doesn't matter if any particular Japanese cherry is a mule or not ('Somei-yoshino' - the 'Yoshino' of western horticulture - produces fruits, is therefore quite apparently not sterile) - it won't fertilize your orchard cherries anyway.

If you are way down in California - for best results from Garden Web discussions you should be more specific about what geographic area you are in - many of the Japanese cherries prevalent in suitable parts of the country elsewhere (such as up here) won't necessarily work out very well. You should visit local, publicly accessible collections that include Japanese cherries to see what kinds they have doing well and persisting. If you find any plantings of the wild species and primary hybrids (such as P. x yedoensis) you are interested in it may be possible to go back at fruiting time, gather fallen cherries from beneath these trees and start your own seedlings.

Complex hybrids (such as various built-up, double-flowered Sato-zakura like 'Kanzan' probably are) cannot be expected to come true from seed - should any seed of these ever be encountered.

The best western account of Japanese cherry trees that have been on the market on this continent is probably North American Landscape Trees by Arthur Lee Jacobson. It was published in Berkeley during 1996, is not in print. But libraries of colleges with horticulture programs probably have copies you can look at, if interested. Mr. Jacobson travels to California periodically to do research for his books at universities there, which have libraries with larger or different collections than those in Seattle.

Your above list does not dovetail completely with what you are likely to find on the market in this country. For pictures and descriptions (if you are in southern California, note which ones they say are suitable for mild climates) of kinds being produced commercially by one California wholesale nursery...

Here is a link that might be useful: L. E. Cooke Co. - Flowering Cherry Trees

This post was edited by bboy on Fri, Jan 9, 15 at 18:27

You might be able to find small sizes of one or two kinds that interest you at this place, which has what must be one of - if not the - largest retail offerings of ornamental plants in the country. Otherwise it is usual for deciduous flowering trees to be sold in at least a 5 gallon pot size. At a typical independent garden center - where you would go if you want to move beyond the tiny selections presented by big box plant departments - most of the flowering trees are liable to be in even bigger containers.

Here is a link that might be useful: Forestfarm : Plant Nursery Online : Find Plants at ForestFarm

There is another article I found, interesting from a scientific perspective.

http://www.hi-ho.ne.jp/tomiyo-de/new/clone_cherry.htm
(site is in Japanese)

They say that the cherry trees have 48 telomere chromosomes that limit their possible lifespan from the time of sexual reproduction. Since Yoshino cherries can only be propagated by grafting, the authors point out that at some point the Yoshino will be destined for extinction. At some point the cells in the new graftings will simply run out of telomeres. The tree might be physically only a few years old, but genetically it is many hundreds of years old.

If you were wondering how it is mathematically possible for only 48 telomeres, each one being lost each time a cell lineage divides, to be enough for all those cells,
2 raised to the 48th power = 281474976710656
That is more than the number of cells in the human body.

Since the oldest cherry blossom tree is over 1500 years old, and the Yoshino was bred in the early eighteenth century, it will be a long time before the current strain of Yoshino cherries grows extinct.

This is one of the reasons why it is so important to preserve the genetic diversity of the wild cherries.

Update: After doing further research, it seems that telomeres do indeed shorten over several generations in plant cells, but plants have special meristematic cells in high growth areas, which contains telomerase, to prevent telomere shortening. These cells divide and replenish the telomere lengths in new plant tissues.

This post was edited by Socal2warm on Sat, Jan 10, 15 at 23:07

Any cherry living 1500 years highly doubtful.

This post was edited by bboy on Sat, Jan 10, 15 at 18:15

Cherry trees can live a very long time, if properly cared for, and if they remain free from insect infestation and disease. It is true that most cherry trees do not live nearly this long, typically 15-20 years, but this is due to environmental factors. The theoretical age limit is quite long.
There are plenty of cherry blossom trees in Japan which are hundreds of years old. When they get to be very old, they require an extreme amount of care and specialized maintenance to ensure that they continue to survive.

Thank you for posting the link in your past post.

This post was edited by Socal2warm on Sat, Jan 10, 15 at 17:22

Yes, Japanese sources claim great ages for certain cherry trees but I have not seen any backing evidence such as ring counts of core samples being presented myself. In general Prunus species are pioneer trees that come up after disturbances, grow rapidly and flower young, then decline and die out as other kinds of trees come up around them.

We have large, spreading, venerable-looking specimens of Japanese cherry trees in the Pacific Northwest also - that are nowhere near hundreds of years old, let alone thousands.

I was able to find a very informative site, which gives the origins of the different cherry blossom varieties (you might have to copy and paste the link)
http://botanyboy.org/yoshino-cherry-tree-prunus-x-yedoensis-the-famous-japanese-cherry-blossom/

There are nine main different varieties of cherry that grow in the wild in Japan:

Yamazakura (Prunus jamasakura)

Oyamazakura (Prunus sargentii)

Kasumisakura (Prunus verecunda)

Oshimazakura (Prunus speciosa)

Edohigan (Prunus Ascendens spachiana)

Mamesakura (Prunus incise)

Choujizakura (Prunus apetala)

Minezakura (Prunus nipponica)

Miyamazakura (Prunus maximowiczii)

The Yoshino cherry was the result of a single hybridization between Edohigan and Oshimazakura.

Cherries with the name 'Serrulata' are those found in the Satozakura group, which are the cultivated cherries. These derive mainly from a number of the wild Japanese varieties listed above.

In addition, there is the Kanhizakura (Prunus campanulata), which was brought to Japan much later, and can tolerate warmer climates.

Prunus jamasakura is considered the wild P. serrulata, is therefore listed by traditionalists as P. serrulata var. spontanea. As P. serrulata is a botanical epithet it is not correctly applied to any garden hybrids. Your post(s) have other mistakes also, you need to read some western sources such as the one book I suggested to get the full picture - you are making both errors of commission and omission. Looking more into how botanical and cultivar names work would help.

Thanks for the information.

While Edohigan is one of the original wild cherry varieties in Japan, there are different cultivars, some upright and some weeping. In the West, the name almost always refers specifically to Prunus subhirtella pendula, which I believe is a cultivar of Prunus spachiana.

The naming can get confusing, partly because all these cultivars originated from Japan and have mostly never become popular in the West, and partly because there has been so much hybridization and breeding, it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between species and cultivars.

Keep reading, in the meantime you are making it more complicated or garbled than it actually is. Note, again that there is an old taxonomy still in use in Japan and by some westerners who follow Japanese references merely because the Japanese live where many of the trees are that does not really always seem correct (P. serrulata var. spontanea for instance) to other students of the situation. Also there is a tendency in parts of the Old World to name more entities than there may really be, or to at least use higher rankings (such as species) in many instances than North American observers may think warranted.

For more on this topic, from an additional western source...

Here is a link that might be useful: Cherry Cultivars : Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival

What about the scented varieties of cherry blossom?

“Many Japanese flowering cherries have distinctly scented
flowers. Their cumarin-like fragrance is similar to that of crushed almonds,
although the scent of ‘Ama-no-gawa’ [The Milky Way] has been associated also
with freesia.” Wybe Kuitert (1999)

It is fairly common for wild cherries in the Oshima family
to have some degree of scent, though this varies by individual tree. (Oshima = P. speciosa )

Smelling the pink blossoms of the popular ornamental 'kanzan', I can just barely make out a subtle fragrance. A little spicy like clover, sweet like honeysuckle, and smells just a little like carnations. But again, the fragrance is extremely weak, almost non-existent.

I have read in old sources that choujizakura means "clove cherry", small white blossoms have a faint fragrance of cloves. It is considered a rare wild species in Japan.

Did you find the cherries you were looking for? May I suggest a few that have become favourites?

I helped a friend design and build a garden around her new house. About the only thing she had growing was a very beat-up Kanzan. She wanted to keep it and so I decided to give it some company. I planted a variety of Prunus including the purple-leaved plum, P. cerasifera 'Pissardii', the Fuji cherry, P. incisa 'Kojo nomai' and P. 'Pandora'. All hardy, all beautiful, all well-behaved (well at least here in N Ireland).

If you have a fairly sheltered spot, my all-time favourite is the Chinese P. serrula. The flowers are few, tiny white ones but the polished Mahogany-coloured bark is glorious all year.

As for the age of the trees, while it is true cherries are not long lived, in Japan they are held in such reverance that some specimins are propped, pruned and coddled for YEARS, just to keep them going.