Prunus Okame - Glorious Flowering Cherry That Braves Early Spring Weather & Has A GREAT Story 😄👍👏💚

Well good morning and welcome to Over the Vest nurseries, it's a rather windy day here on an overcast day in early spring, and as you see here in one of our marshalling yards, we're getting ready to send out some of the plants to our partnering garden centers, those are the ones that are located right throughout our Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern region, places that are carrying all sorts of beautiful plants. But you know, while things are a little overcast and dull this morning, that's about to change, because I want to show you this wonderful early flowering variety of Flowering Cherry. This is of course, for those of you that are in the know, that are experienced gardeners, you'll probably already have guessed that this is Captain Collingwood Ingram's magnificent Prunus Okami. It's a beautiful, in fact I would say probably one of the best flowering cherries for a small to medium-sized garden, so I hope that you'll get a chance to grow it in your garden, and also stick with me for a little while, because I'm looking forward to telling you more about it, and in particular about the wonderful background story about the development of this very fine flowering tree. And here in this part of the nursery where we grow our trees, I've pulled one of our trees here to let you see a couple of things to look for when you're picking your trees. The first thing to do obviously is to make sure that it's a nice, healthy, well-grown plant. One that's going to successfully transplant and get off to a good start. It's always nice to have a good straight stem, but importantly it has to have a good, well- furnished branch system. One that's going to be able to support the tree when it's a mature, large specimen. And it's nice to be able to buy them when they're in flower, like this one now, but remember that the trees that we put into our garden centers are container-grown trees, that's ones grown in pots, which means that they can be successfully transplanted over a very long period, quite literally from spring all the way through to the latter part of the autumn. So spring flowering trees like this one may not necessarily be in flower when you're going along to buy it. But the most important part is the bit that you normally don't see, the part that's under the ground, or in this case here, in a pot. You see, our trees go through a special process to make sure that the root system is made up of a network of fine, fibrous roots. Ones that means that it quickly roots into the site, gets off to a good start, and is going to be more stable later in life. That's why it's important to buy a container-grown tree like this, that's nice and healthy, and one that's going to last in your garden for many, many years. But first, as anybody that spent some time in the UK will know, it's not unusual, if you're there for any period of time, to acquire a nickname. If your surname is Miller or Bell, you're likely to be called perhaps Dusty, Dusty Miller, or Bell, Ringer, or Ding Dong. If you're tall and slender you're probably going to be called Lofty, and in a reverse way, if you're big and muscular they're probably going to call you Tiny. All sorts of nicknames given to people, it seems to be part of the British humor. And, eminent horticulturalists and plant hunters got their nicknames too. Capability Brown is a good example. And also two very important plant hunters and plant introducers that were involved with the origins of this particular variety, got their nicknames too. Ernest Chinese Wilson was the one who unlocked the Pandora's Box, the botanical wonders that came out of China and the Far East, and in fact he was the one who introduced one of the parents of this beautiful hybrid. The other plant hunter of course was Captain Collingwood Ingram, who became known as Cherry Ingram, because he became the world's authority on flowering cherries. He made three separate trips to Japan, first as a tourist, then as an ornithologist because he was interested in birds in his earlier years, and then round about 1926-1927 he got really interested in Japanese flowering cherries. And that's when he arranged with Japanese nurserymen to have 59 separate species and cultivars sent to his home in Kent. And that's where he started to plant out the varieties and then develop a world-renowned knowledge on the subject. Meanwhile he started to think about the possibility of creating hybrids that might be better able to cope with our conditions in the Western world, and that's when he came up with a plan to hybridize a species that he knew about that came from the tropical areas of southern China, Taiwan and Vietnam, one called Prunus Campanulata, it's called that because it has flowers that are a bit like a bell, and he knew that this was a beautiful bright flamingo pink flowering species, it wasn't hardy but it had qualities like that, and also was a fairly upright grower with a rounded habit. And if he could cross that with a species that comes from much further north, colder areas of Japan, one called Prunus incisa, known today as the Fuji cherry, he might be able to combine those beautiful flowering traits with the hardiness of the Fuji one and create a hybrid. The problem is of course, is how do you cross one that flowers in January and February with another one that doesn't flower to the end of March or April time? And that's when he came up with the ingenious plan of going to the temperate house in Kew Gardens, where there was a plant of the Taiwan cherry Prunus Campanulata, he dusted out some of the pollen onto a piece of tissue paper, and then put it into a thermos flask. And he kept it in there until the Prunus incisa, the Fuji cherry, came into bloom at the end of March and April. Now that meant a full nine weeks inside the flask, but obviously enough pollen remained viable to make the cross. And in 1942 he introduced Prunus Okami that he named after a Japanese goddess of good fortune and mirth, happiness and contentment and good humor. And that was the beginnings of this fabulous variety. Now it's a variety that's hardy to zone 5, it will grow anywhere in our region, gets to about 20 to 25 foot high, has a nice upright rounded habit, is as you see, very free flowering, has really beautiful flowers that come in at a time of year when really very little else is flowering. And what's interesting is that while it flowers early in the season, all the flowers don't open at the same time. Some of them remain tight in bud, which means that even if it does get zapped by a sudden frosty night, you should still get a reasonable display with it most years. And I've been amazed when it's flowering so early in the season, how popular it's become with pollinating insects and bees. I'm totally amazed when I come out and see it, and then see how busy all those insects are working through the flowers. It's a great plant to grow in an average garden soil. As long as the soil is free-draining, you'll find that it will be nice and vigorous and put on a good show. Cherries just do not like damp, wet, heavy clay soils, so avoid that and you'll find that it will grow and settle down and put on a really good growth habit throughout the seasons. Now in a way, it's kind of appropriate that today is so windy and blustery, because it helps to show how valuable this tree is at the early part of the year when not a lot else is really flowering. Usually the display period will last about three weeks or so, and even though the flowers are now on this stage going over, if you look carefully you'll see that each of the little flowers have a bright red calyx and the stems for the little meal parts, the stamens, which still gives off a very nice attractive reddish color. Now when it comes to placing it somewhere around your home, most of us are probably limited by the size of our gardens, but if you have a larger site and you're perhaps able to choose a potential site in different parts of the garden, one of the things that you might think about is perhaps putting it up on a sloping site in an elevated position, certainly somewhere away from a frost pocket. You see on a frosty night, cold air drains down and lies in the bottom of valleys and what they call frost pockets, so getting the tree up on the side of a hill somewhere means that usually it will escape the worst of the frosty conditions. And if you take a tip from some of the fruit farmers, they will plant their early flowering varieties on a north-facing slope too, so that then the flowers and the flower buds wake up later and therefore avoid some of those early frosts. And obviously as a windy day like today shows, it's great if you're able to put it in in a shelter position, that way the flowers will last longer. And the neat thing I really like about this variety too, is that it's a wonderful item for cutting. I frequently will come out and take off some of the branches and put them in a vase of water and that helps to brighten up and make a cheery little piece for inside of our homes too. And if you'd like to find out more about how to go about planting a container grown tree, check out some of the videos here on this channel, there's one there that will take you through all of the stages and show you the best way to plant them. So lots of information here on this channel, and when I'm on about it why don't you think about, if you haven't already, think about subscribing to our channel too, that way each time that we publish a new video like this one you'll find that it will turn up automatically in your feed. So all in all this is an excellent, very good, beautiful little flowering cherry that's going to bring a lot of wonderful, exciting color and interest to your home at a time when there isn't a whole lot of else flowering. This is David Wilson, enjoy your gardening, it's good for us and it's very good for our environment too.