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Prunus campanulata Maxim.

Bell-flowered Cherry

Modern name

Prunus campanulata Maxim.

A deciduous cherry tree up to 30 ft high, of graceful habit, free from down in all its parts; year-old shoots freely marked with warts. Leaves ovate, oval or slightly obovate, slender-pointed, broadly wedge-shaped to slightly heart-shaped at the base, margins regularly set with fine forward-pointing or incurved teeth, 212 to 4 in. long, 1 to 134 in. wide, nerves in six to eight pairs; stalks 12 to 34 in. long. Flowers 34 in. wide, produced in March and April, two to six together on main-stalks 1 to 112 in. long that bear usually a couple of leaf-like bracts; individual flower-stalks 12 to 34 in. long. Petals of a beautiful deep rose, roundish ovate, notched at the apex, 14 in. wide. Calyx-tube rose-coloured except at the base, the reflexed, sparsely toothed lobes also rosy; stamens deep rose, anthers yellow. Fruits described as red, conical, 58 in. long, scarcely 12 in. wide. Bot. Mag., t. 9575.

Native of Formosa and S. China and thought to be wild also in the Ryukyu Islands. The bell shape of the flowers to which the specific name refers seems to be characteristic of them in a young state only. It appears to have been introduced by Messrs Sander of St Albans in 1899, but owing to its tenderness was lost and not seen again until Wilson took plants from Japan to the Arnold Arboretum in 1915. Its flowers are, perhaps, the most highly coloured of all the genuinely wild types. Near London it needs the protection of a wall, but succeeds in the open ground in the mildest parts. At Kew it flowers freely in the Temperate House in March or even earlier. Award of Merit 1935.

P. cerasoides D. Don P. puddum Roxb. – This species, which belongs to the same group as P. campanulata, is represented in cultivation by var. rubea Ingram, which ranges from Kashmir along the Himalaya, through upper Burma to W. Yunnan. In the wild it makes a tall tree, bearing its rich carmine flowers well before the leaves in February or March. It was introduced to Britain by Kingdon Ward in 1931 (KW 9314) and flowered at Highdown in Sussex in 1938. Unfortunately in our climate the flowers are paler coloured than in the wild, and are borne with the unfolding leaves. Twigs reddish brown, glabrous. Leaves 212 to 412 in. long, oblong-elliptic acuminate or caudate, almost glabrous, bright green above, conspicuously veined, with simple, gland-tipped serrations. Flowers more or less bell-shaped, two to four in umbellate or shortly pedunculate clusters. Calyx-tube glabrous, bright crimson, its lobes ciliate and of the same colour. Bot. Mag., n.s., t. 12. See also: Kingdon Ward, Plant Hunters Paradise, pp. 149-50, and Journ. R.H.S. Vol. 71, pp. 321 and 74, p. 289.


Prunus campanulata

Prunus campanulata

Genus

Prunus

Other species in the genus