Cerasus Subhirtella: The Silky Cherry Beauty

Cerasus subhirtella, a variant under the cherry genus of the Rosaceae family, is a tree that grows between 3 to 10 meters tall. Its bark is gray-brown.

The young twigs are gray, the tender branches are green and densely covered with white short soft hair. Its winter buds are ovate, with sparse hairs on the tip of the scales. The leaves range from ovate to ovate-oblong, measuring 3-6 cm in length and 1.5-3 cm in width.

The tips of the leaves are gradually pointed, the base is broadly cuneate, and the edges have fine serrations and double serrations.

The upper surface is dark green, hairless or with sparse soft hair on the midrib, while the underside is pale green with white, sparse, soft hair, particularly dense along the veins.

The lateral veins are almost parallel, with 10-14 pairs. The leaf stalk is 5-8 mm long and covered with white soft hair. The stipules are brown, extremely narrow, linear, shorter than the leaf stalk, and have sparse glandular teeth on the edges.

Morphological Features

Also known as Silky Cherry, Weeping Cherry, or Double-flowered Cherry. This deciduous large tree grows up to 25 meters tall. The main branches grow horizontally, while the smaller branches are either erect or drooping.

The leaves are alternate with stalks, elongated oval-shaped, sharply pointed at the end, wedge-shaped at the base, with sharp serrated edges, measuring 4-9 cm in length and 2-4 cm in width.

Both young and mature leaves have soft hairs. From late March to early April, the leaves emerge earlier than the flowers. The flowers are pale pink to white and form an umbrella-shaped cluster.

The flower stalks are long, and the sepals and pistils are hairy. The calyx is tubular and splits into five parts at the top. The petals are five in number, concave, and spread out horizontally. There are multiple stamens and one pistil.

The flowers form an umbrella-shaped cluster with 2-3 flowers per cluster and open simultaneously with the leaves. The bracts are ovate, about 4 mm long and 3 mm wide, sparsely covered with soft hair and fall off early.

The flower stalk is 1-2 cm long and covered with sparse soft hair. The calyx is tubular, slightly pot-shaped, 4-5 mm long and 2-3 mm wide, slightly enlarged at the base and narrower at the neck, and covered with white sparse soft hairs outside.

The petals are pale pink, inverted ovate-oblong, and concave at the tip. There are about 20 stamens, and the pistil at the base has sparse hairs.

The drupe is ovoid and black. The surface of the stone has slight ridges. The fruit stalk is 1.5-2.5 cm long, covered with sparse soft hairs that spread out, and is slightly enlarged at the top. It flowers in April and fruits in June.

Morphological Features: This variant differs from the previous one in that the branches spread out in an arch shape and the small branches droop like a whip. The calyx is almost smooth and hairless.

Distribution Range

It is cultivated in Taiwan, China.