The skeletal winter forms of fruiting trees give way in spring to a riot of blossom. Plump, flowering buds, dormant over the winter in their protective, downy scales, were formed by the previous November, waiting for warmth to unfurl. Increasing temperatures and longer daylight hours cause a change in the plant’s hormones, forgoing the growth restriction appropriate for the colder months and sending stored nutrients to the shoots to encourage an explosion of growth.
Garden apple: cultivar unknown
Blossom is the term used for the flowers of fruit bearing trees, plum, cherry, almond, apple and pear. For a brief spell a mass of flowers covers the trees’ canopies in luminous clouds of delicate pink or white blooms, a fleeting and ephemeral beauty, before the delicate, short-lived blooms are lifted by the wind to cover the ground in a drift of fallen petals.
Blossom is a metaphor for renewal, awakening, for breathtaking beauty and for the fleeting nature of life.
Street cherry: cultivar unknown
Blossoming trees are angiosperms, flowering plants that enclose their seeds in a fruit. Around 80 million years ago the number of flowering plants on earth exploded, botanists call this period the “great radiation”. Plants began to develop petals, enticing pollinators and speeding reproduction. Striking colours, captivating scents, petals on which to land and nectar feasts all contributed to attracting creatures that could transport pollen to another plant and enhance the chance of fertilisation and fruiting.
Malus ‘Evereste’
Apples are believed to have originated in the Tien Shan Mountains of central Asia. Wild boar, deer, bears, wild horses and donkeys, wandering the forests and surrounding steppes, gorged on the wild apples in the autumn, selecting the sweeter fruits, the seeds or pips then passed through their bodies, growing in their dung, to colonise new areas. When humans domesticated horses, and trading began along the ‘Silk Road’, their fruits were easily portable foods and distribution widened. More recently a whole range of sweet and culinary apples have been bred to suit climate and location, for eating or storing. The apple blossoms with clusters of delicate, fragrant, flowers made up of five pink-white petals and pale lemon stamens appear alongside bright green leaves filling gardens and the orchards of places like Kent, Worcestershire and Herefordshire.
Street crab apple: cultivar unknown
Pears and plums too are thought to originate in central Asia. Wild pears have forbidding thorns as a deterrent to herbivores, bred out of domestic varieties to prevent harm to humans when harvesting. Pear blossom emerges while the leaves are still immature, masses of frothy white, five petaled blooms, pale, yellow-green anthers with red-brown coloured filaments. Wild plums can also be spiny, the flowers open up along the branches, each bud opening to a single flower in small clusters at the same time as the leaves.
Garden pear: cultivar unknown
In Japan the cherry or ‘Sakura’ blossom season is celebrated with ‘Hanami’ or flower viewing, with parties, illuminations and picnics under the boughs. The ‘cherry blossom front’ is forecasted with the weather, following the opening of the buds from region to region as people reconnect with the natural world and welcome in the spring. The ‘Sakura’ is considered sacred. Traditionally people made offerings to the roots of the trees, feasted under the branches and drank sake, writing poems in praise of the delicate flowers. Farmers took ‘spring mountain trips’ to eat under the blossoming trees. Today parks, avenues and hillsides are filled with people picnicking with friends and enjoying the fearless, fleeting blossoms, considering their beauty and the ephemeral nature of life.
Street cherry: cultivar unknown
Drinking up the clouds
it spews out cherry blossoms –
Yoshino Mountain.
Wind blows
they scatter and it dies
fallen petals
Petals falling
unable to resist
the moonlight
Sakura, sakura
they fall in the dreams
of sleeping beauty.
By Yusa Buson