Few lavishly flowering small trees possess so many pleasing qualities as Fuji cherries.
There are so many kinds of ornamental cherries that it is difficult to learn to recognize more than the familiar types, but Fuji cherries can be recognized with surprising ease.
Fuji Cherries Growth
First of all, they develop into spreading small trees with a dense crown of delicate branches typically 12’ to 15’ feet high.
Habit and size vary considerably with the situation, however, and in poor or rocky soils, the little trees are scarcely more than low shrubs, but they are as healthy and floriferous as possible.
Delicate Fuji Cherry Blooms
Fuji cherries bloom just as the bronzy young leaves are developing—an early stage that precedes the green of mature foliage.
Bronzy young leaves and pink or reddish flower stalks and calyces give the plants an effect of soft pink bloom, but this is an illusion that is resolved when the flowers are studied more closely.
Typically, the petals are pure white, 5 in number, and distinctly notched at the apex.
Though less than an inch across, the flowers are produced in numbers that the bloom looks pretty generous.
In “Plant Hunting,” E. H. Wilson says, “No cherry is hardier, more floriferous or more lovely than this.”
Yamadei: Fuji Cherry Variety
Yamadei is a natural variety with young leaves and flower clusters pale green instead of bronzy or reddish and petals of the typical white.
While the petals soon start to fall, the bloom is so abundant that the effect, as a whole, lasts about a week.
However, the calyces persist, and with the stalks continue their pink effect.
Fuji Cherries Fruits
The fruits mature rapidly, turning from green to reddish purple and nearly black in less than 2 days.
However, few of these small cherries reach the black stage, for these unseasonably early morsels are discovered by cedar waxwings and robins as soon as they start to ripen.
Despite the thin covering of flesh around the pit, the fruits are greedily claimed by these birds or other avian visitors.
It is interesting to note that seedlings come up as readily as radishes and germinate the same year in nature.
Collingwood Ingram, the English authority on ornamental cherries, notes that Prunus incisa flowers are often fertilized by pollen from other early-blooming types and that plants grown from seed obtained in plantings are very likely to be hybrids.
Following this theory and judging from descriptions in Japanese botanies, one might suspect that trees of Fuji cherry more than 20’ feet high are probably not the true species but hybrids with some portion of Prunus subbirtella or Prunus sargenti in their makeup.
There is much possibility of variation in cultivated plants, and gardeners should keep their eyes open for individuals showing distinctive differences.
Ideal Growing Conditions
Fuji cherries thrive in almost any soil, but not in wet or poorly drained situations.
While they manage to grow well and bloom abundantly even in the shade, an open exposure is undoubtedly best.
Temperatures considerably below zero do not injure buds or shoots.
Small plants are liable to damage from rabbits, and a cylinder of wire protecting the lower portions is advisable until they are beyond the danger stage.
Aside from this care in infancy, the small trees are amazingly hardy and rarely troubled by the many trials of their relatives in orchards.
Uses Of Fuji Cherries
Fuji cherries can be used either as shrubs or as small trees in home gardens.
They are most attractive in boundary plantings where their maturity in either category is appropriate.
Planted 2’ or 3’ feet apart, young plants soon develop into an effective low flowering hedge which can be kept at the proportion one wishes by a single shearing in early summer.
In a small garden, their blooming season is scarcely long enough to justify planting them as specimens on a lawn, though at Highland Park in Rochester, a group featured in this way always gains much admiration each spring.
A vigorous old plant at the Rutgers Horticulture Farm has adapted to an abrupt slope, emphasizing much potential usefulness in erosion control.
The Japanese Plant “Fuji Cherry”
One can imagine that this little tree is following the way of its ancestors on the slopes of Fujisan.
The Fuji cherry was among the first Japanese plants known to the western world. The botanist-physician-traveler Thunberg observed it and described it as Prunus incisa in his book “Flora Japonica,” published in Leipzig in 1784.
This species did not become known as a garden plant in America until about 40 years ago.
The scientific name refers to the unusually deep jagged teeth margining the tiny leaves, and these large teeth themselves are bordered with very fine teeth.
In its native Honshu, the large central island of Japan, Prunus incisa is most frequently known as Mame ZakuraPea or Miniature Cherry—and occasionally as Fuji Zakura—Fuji Cherry—because it grows abundantly on the lower slopes of Fujisan.