The Old Timer

MAYER, B. 2019. THE OLDER TIMER. ARNOLDIA, 76(4): 40 The Old Timer Bob Mayer ore than ten years ago, I photographed the basis of the famous planting that clouds an odd-looking tree growing in front the Tidal Basin with evanescent blossoms each Mof the Roxbury puddingstone outcrop- spring. This lineage is especially significant ping on Valley Road. It was early May, and the given that, when Ernest Henry Wilson visited tree was in bloom—sort of. One of the main Japan in 1914 and 1915, he reported that forty- branches was barren. It looked like the tree year-old trees at the Imperial Botanical Garden had been mistakenly passed over by the crews were the oldest known representatives of this clearing away the dead and dying after a long hybrid (which is now considered a complex winter. When I photographed the tree two years cross between Prunus speciosa and P. subhir- later, in 2009, the horticultural staff had visited, tella) and that the original taxonomic descrip- not to remove the tree but to prune it vigor- tion had been based upon them. ously. The barren branch was gone, and the tree Wilson observed the old Yoshino cherries resembled a warty, one-eyed beast, sprouting flowering at the Imperial Botanical Garden, feeble arms. I checked the metal tag: a Yoshino with benches where visitors could sit beneath cherry (Prunus × yedoensis forma perpendens, the out stretched branches. Despite the recent accession 22542*A). It was accessioned in 1925, scientific recognition of the hybrid, Wilson a dozen years before my own birth date. Per- described its omnipresence throughout Tokyo. haps because of that, I developed an attachment “This is the Cherry so generally planted in the to this aging—indeed ancient by cherry stan- parks, temple grounds, cemeteries and streets,” dards—tree despite is ungainly appearance, and he wrote in The Cherries of Japan, published I occasionally grabbed other images of the “old in 1916.“Its flowers herald an annual national timer,” as I nicknamed it. holiday decreed by the Emperor. In all over fifty While the record label suggests this accession thousand trees of this species are growing in the was grown from seed sent from the Imperial precincts of the city.” This celebration, known Botanical Garden in Tokyo, Japan, I learned that as hanami, is still enormously popular in Japan, an important intermediate step was involved. and it is premised on appreciating ephemeral- The tree was grown as a seedling from another ity—a celebration of fleeting beauty. Yoshino cherry (accession 5351*A), which After discovering the significant background arrived from the Imperial Botanical Garden of the old timer, I returned recently for another (now known as the Koishikawa Botanical Gar- look. It seemed taller and statelier, now that I den) in 1902. The original tree grew near the had uncovered its history. Horticultural care Forest Hills Gate, and Charles Sprague Sargent during my decade of observations had main- often commented on the pink and white flow- tained—seemingly even resurrected—this old tree, which looked even healthier now than ers. Even though the buds were regularly nicked when I first encountered it. If the spring flowers by spring frosts, Sargent esteemed the hybrid as symbolize the swift passage of the seasons, then “one of the handsomest” cherries from Japan. the knobby form of this tree seems to extend According to Donald Wyman—a long-time this metaphor even further, embodying the pas- horticulturist at the Arboretum—the Arbore- sage of years. I’m confident the tree will survive tum’s original tree represented the first intro- much longer than this humbled observer. duction of the Yoshino cherry into America. This predated a more famous gift of the hybrid Bob Mayer has been birding, photographing, and (along with other Japanese cherries) to the city volunteering as a docent and field study guide at the of Washington, DC, in 1912, where it formed Arnold Arboretum since 2002. .

Load more