Complimentary 
NEW SERIES VOL. Ill 
NO. 3 
ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
BULLETIN 
OF 
POPULAR INFORMATION 
JAMAICA PLAIN, MASS. MAY 14. 1917 
Eastern Asiatic Cherries. During the last few years the Arboretum 
has been engaged in studying the Cherry-trees of eastern Asia, and 
has assembled a large collection of these plants, including most of the 
species and all the forms with double and otherwise abnormal flowers 
which are popular garden plants in Japan where the flowering of these 
trees is celebrated by national rejoicings. All the world has heard of 
the Japanese Cherry-blossoms, and travellers in the East usually so 
arrange their journeys that they can be in Tokyo when the white 
flowers of fifty thousand trees of the Yoshino-zakura {Prunus yedo- 
ensis) make a day of thanksgiving, and the great trees in the long 
avenue of Cherry-trees (P. serrulata) at Koganei are covered with their 
rose-colored flowers. Well known to travellers, too, are the avenues 
of Cherry-trees at Arashi-yama near Kyoto and at Yoshino near Nara. 
The Cherry-trees which mean so much to the Japanese and delight all 
foreigners who visit Japan in early spring are perfectly hardy, and 
easy to grow here in New England; and it is unfortunate that there 
is no hillside in the Arboretum which can be covered with these trees 
or no space where a long avenue of them can be planted, for the 
flowering of a great number of these trees might become as great a 
joy to the people of Boston as they are in Japan. Such collections of 
Cherry-trees might well form a part of the equipment for pleasure 
and instruction in all the northern cities of the country, but up to this 
time only Rochester, New York, is arranging to make a plantation of 
these trees to cover many acres of rolling hills in its great park on 
the shores of Lake Ontario. In the Arboretum only room for a few 
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