Japanese flowering cherries

"It does not matter how young or how strong you may be, the hour of death comes sooner than you expect. It is an extraordinary miracle that you should have escaped to this day; do you suppose you have even the briefest respite in which to relax?"(1)

What accounts for the Japanese passion for cherry blossoms? It's the flowers' brief and uncertain lives. That answer comes with the authority of Columbia professor Donald Keene, grand old man of American commentators on Japanese culture. The Japanese find cherry blossoms so heartbreakingly beautiful because of their evanescence. The blooms last only a few days, less time than those of most trees.(2) Perishability is one of four features identified by Keene as central to the Japanese idea of beauty in his essay, Japanese Aesthetics.(3) The Japanese savor evanescent beauty for its reminder of the pathos of transient human life. Keene supports his argument with the words of the fourteenth century writer Kenkō, whose Essays in Idleness are a Japanese cultural touchstone: "If man were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino, never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, but lingered on forever in this world, how things would lose their power to move us! The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty." This view of the world through the eyes of the doomed imbues every falling petal with a sense of tragedy. An aesthetic preference for perishability seems peculiarly Japanese. An appreciation for the short-lived does not necessarily come easily to those of other cultures. Keene recounts the story of a Japanese novelist visiting Europe who was stunned when his invitations to European friends to go snow-viewing were met with laughter.

If we go to Washington D.C. or to Newark's Branch Brook Park to see the cherry blossoms, we take care, of course, to time our trip so as to see them at their peak. Fourteenth century Kenkō might have regarded such an approach as insensitive: "Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom?...Branches about to blossom or gardens strewn with faded flowers are worthier of our admiration....In all things, it is the beginnings and ends that are interesting. Does the love between men and women refer only to the moments when they are in each other's arms? The man who grieves over a love affair broken off before it was fulfilled, who bewails empty vows, who spends long autumn nights alone...such a man truly knows what love means."(4)

Cherry blossoms were painted on the airplanes of kamikaze bomber pilots, the most startling link between those flowers and the tragic brevity of human life. Some believed that the souls of the pilots would be reincarnated as cherry blossoms. A thousand cherry trees are planted at Yasukuni Shrine, the Tokyo war memorial.

The next time you find yourself elated by suburban New Jersey's display of cherry blossoms, you might enhance your enjoyment by reflecting with Kenkō that "the hour of death comes sooner than you expect." On the other hand, you might instead prefer to take comfort in the sturdy blooms of Cornus officinalis, reassuringly long-lived.(5)

(1) Essays in Idleness, The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō, trans. Donald Keene, Columbia University Press 1967, p. 120.

(2) By contrast, the Japanese Cornus officinalis that began blooming in Cedar Brook Park on March 6 are still at it. See Plainfield Trees March 23 posting on Cornelian cherry dogwoods. To be fair, the bloom period of Cornus officinalis is unusually long. Typically the flowers last five or six weeks in Plainfield.

(3) Donald Keene, Japanese Aesthetics, in The Pleasures of Japanese Literature, Columbia University Press 1988, pp. 3-22. The essay began life as a lecture for a nonspecialist audience and is quite readable.

(4) Essays in Idleness, cited above, pp. 115-118.

(5) See note 2.

Copyright Gregory Palermo

Cornelian cherry dogwood

Spring arrives in Plainfield before the vernal equinox. Its coming is announced by the bloom of the mysterious yellow-flowered trees lining both sides of the Park Avenue entrance to Cedarbrook Park. Blooming with the earliest crocuses, these trees announce that winter is over and brook no argument. The best time to view them is in the morning, when the sunlight comes streaming over the rooftops to illuminate the yellow flowers and make them glow. It's a sight that enlivens many a morning commute. Surely these trees are one of the best features of Cedarbrook Park, which was designed by the Olmsted firm.

I have heard the trees identified as witch hazel (They're not.) Or spice bush. (Not that either.) Nonagenarian Barbara Sandford tells me that, when her children were very young, she taught them that the Cedarbrook Park trees were called Cornus mas (a.k.a. Cornelian cherry dogwood. Barbara has known that the trees were dogwoods for quite a while.) After I planted some Cornus mas in my own garden, I noticed that the Cedarbrook Park trees invariably flowered two weeks before my trees or anyone else's Cornelian cherry dogwoods. So my bet is that the Cedarbrook Park trees are not Cornus mas, but rather Cornus officinalis, a very rare bird and a close Japanese cousin to the European Cornus mas. Cornus officinalis is supposed to flower earlier than Cornus mas and berry later. Whereas Cornus mas berries in July, Cornus officinalis is supposed to berry in September. I have never gotten myself well enough organized to check for berries in September, though. This season I'll do it without fail.

A Cornus mas at 1785 Sleepy Hollow Lane was just beginning to bloom when I photographed it today, more than two weeks after the Cedarbrook Park trees opened their buds.

Both Cornus mas and Cornus officinalis berries look like bright red olives. They also resemble the fruits of Japanese Aucuba, which is in berry now.

Do your Aucubas make berries like these? If not, perhaps your plants are sex-starved.

This female Aucuba, lost in the depths of a shrub border in my garden, is right next to a male. Clearly, she is not lacking for pollen, as evidenced by this generous berry crop. Other female Aucubas not far away produce many fewer berries. With Aucubas, proximity helps pollination. Familiarity breeds berries. Perhaps the insects that pollinate Aucubas are not as wide-ranging as the honey bees that pollinate many of our flowers.

Unfortunately the only male Aucubas I have ever found for sale have leaves that are variegated. Having searched for years for plain green males without success, I gave up, bought variegated males, and hid them in out-of-the-way corners. Fortunately, Aucubas are among the most shade-tolerant plants, capable of growing almost in the dark, so the variegated males are quite easy to hide.(1)

The best-looking Aucubas I know in Plainfield flank the entrance at 972 Kensington Avenue.

Aucubas are at the northern limit of their hardiness in central New Jersey and can be killed back to their roots by an unusually harsh winter. I have seen most of Plainfield's Aucubas killed to the ground once in the last twenty years. They looked as though they had been struck by lightning and burnt to a crisp, reduced to small black cinders. Nothing looks quite so dead as a winter-injured Aucuba.

More on hollies

I wrote in my February 24 posting on hollies that I had heard complaints that the red holly hybrids, including 'Oak Leaf', were susceptible to winter injury in the Plainfield area. Peter Simone writes that there are two 'Oak Leaf' hollies just behind the low privet hedge and flanking the walk at his house at 1414 Watchung Avenue. Peter says that his hollies have not been injured by cold weather, but that deer have eaten a fair amount of one of them. Red hollies have softer leaves than many hollies, and when we think "soft", deer must think "tender".

There is an English holly at 937 Woodland Avenue. A smaller American holly is growing into it, making comparison between the two species easy.

There is an attractive blue holly hedge on Pine Street, alongside 1402 Watchung Avenue

(1) Perhaps my preference for plain green Aucubas is idiosyncratic. To be fair, I have to admit that variegated forms of Aucuba were introduced into cultivation in the United States three quarters of a century before green forms, so someone thought they were attractive (Michael A. Dirr, Manual of Woody Landscape Plants. Stipes Publishing Company 1998, p. 115.) In some places, variegated Aucubas are so much more popular than green varieties that plain green ones are hard to find. Around Lakes Como and Maggiore in northern Italy, where they grow 15 feet tall, Aucubas are used for hedging as commonly as we use privets here. I looked for and failed to find a plain green Aucuba hedge there several years ago. The lacustrine Italians want them variegated.

Copyright Gregory Palermo