To Weep or Not to Weep: Tales of Grafts Gone Bad, Part 3

I would say this is the end of the story of the cherry tree with two habits, but I have a feeling that it will eventually be cut down. That was the idea, I believe, when the grounds crew was sent to work on this tree. Instead of giving up on it, they cut out the root stock sport (which had almost completely taken over), and left the weeping limbs. It looks like a bad perm. Maybe it will fill in and look better in a few years. But probably not.

Willie.

Kwanzan Cherry

Although the single-flower cherries have been long done, the double-flower cherries are still going.

Petals are dropping...

but the canopies are still full of pink.

To Weep or Not to Weep: Tales of Grafts Gone Bad, Part 2

In early fall, I saw a cherry tree with a split personality.

Not only does it have two different habits, it has different flowering times and different flower colors. The weeping part bloomed first with pink flowers, and the rootstock sports bloomed afterward with white flowers.

Cherry

-Okame cherry-

-yoshino cherry-

-yoshino leaves in fall-

-a weeping cherry in winter...

and in spring-

first to bloom

The autumn cherries are in bloom. I had seen one a couple weeks ago in premature bloom, but freezing temperatures put a halt to that. Now all of the autumn cherries are blooming (safely, I hope).

The silver and red maples beat them to it, though. Both of these species have been in bloom for at least ten days.

Red maples have different male and female trees while silver maples are monoecious. These silver maple flowers have long stamens topped with pollen-releasing anthers that bees are already busy exploring.

An early bloom that particularly caught my eye was the snowdrop. I had never seen these before (maybe because I'm from Virginia). I always thought of daffodils and crocuses when it came to spring flowers, but the snowdrop is such a little delight.

There are patches of these all over Green-Wood.

To Weep or Not to Weep: Tales of Grafts Gone Bad, Part 1

A weeping cherry is supposed to only weep, but this tree has a split personality.

The bottom of the tree is skirted with pendulous branches.

But the top of the tree has no signs of weeping at all. And looking up into the canopy, all you see are branches reaching for the sky.

A weeping cherry is often made by grafting: a non-weeping variety is left to grow until the trunk is about four or five feet tall, at which point the branches are cut off and the weeping cherry is grafted on. The original tree can still throw up branches from below the graft, and if these aren't cut off at the base, they can end up dominating the tree.

That's what has happened here. Both types of branches are different varieties; they might even flower at different times. The only way to make a uniform tree at this point would be to cut off all of the weeping branches.